


Zen and the Art of Snake Demon Maintenance

by deadlegato, DeadLegato After Dark (deadlegato)



Category: Hazbin Hotel (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Master/Pet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:22:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28743174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlegato/pseuds/deadlegato, https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlegato/pseuds/DeadLegato%20After%20Dark
Summary: Sir Pentious has been snake-napped from Hell and sold to a wealthy human in the mortal world as a "pet Naga." How is he going to get himself out of this one? Angel and Arackniss are coming to the rescue, but in order to accommodate their travel to the real world, they've been turned into actual spiders. What else could happen?
Relationships: Arackniss/Sir Pentious (Hazbin Hotel), Sir Pentious (Hazbin Hotel)/Original Character(s)
Comments: 66
Kudos: 36





	1. Snapped (Snake Kidnapped)

All the demons currently residing at the “Happy Hotel” were… less than happy, if you excluded Charlie and Alastor. Actually, it was impossible to tell how Alastor was feeling, but he was still wearing his perpetual smile.

It was sunrise in Hell, and Charlie had them all out in front of the hotel in exercise clothes. Dark rings were under most eyes, and they were barely upright. Anyone who didn’t show up in exercise clothes? Well, Alastor took care of that real quick, using his ability to change other demons clothing. Angel and Husk hadn’t even slept that night. 

“Okay, team building exercise! We’re going to run a half mile together,” Charlie cheered, way too awake for that time of day.

“I can’t run. Can I be excused?” Sir Pentious yawned. Where he’d gotten that 80’s stretch headband, no one knew.

“You can slither. Come on, brisk exercise in the morning will get us all jazzed up for a day of seeking redemption!”

Still, Pentious let himself fall behind the others. Once he was far enough back, he slipped into a side alley. As soon as the rest of the group was out of sight, he reversed course and went back towards the hotel. He passed it, then went a few more blocks before ducking into another alley. Once they ran past, he’d rejoin them, and no one would be the wiser. Worker smarter, not harder, after all. He was so smart AND so evil.

Except that cheaters never prosper was certainly something he should have considered. The second thing he should have considered was that he was being watched. A group of imps had been waiting eagerly for the snake to go off alone, and now they had their opportunity.

He was peeking out from behind a dumpster, waiting for the others to run by, and not paying much attention to what was happening behind him. His lower tail eyes detected movement too late. As he turned around, something was clamped over his mouth.

“Hold him down!” one of the imps shouted, grabbing one of his arms as the others tried to catch his thrashing tail. “Don’t let go of that rag!”

Despite his flailing around wildly, trying to punch with his hands and his tails, his consciousness started to slip away as the imp with the cloth over his mouth refused to be thrown off. Blackness appeared around the edges of his vision, spreading inward as he went limp. When he was no longer struggling, the imps used extra rope to tie the anesthetic-soaked cloth around his face. “Open that damned portal, hurry up before he stops breathing.”

…

“I thought all of you would be in better shape than this,” Alastor noted with a smirk. Husk, Baxter, and Angel were wobbling in with legs like jelly. Charlie was dumping water over a huffing Vaggie’s head. Niffty was ready to run another mile, jumping up and down enthusiastically.

“Wait, where’s Sir Pentious?” Charlie asked. “Did he make it back?”

“He probably snuck back into the hotel as soon as we were out of sight,” Baxter snorted. “He’s probably sleeping comfortably right now.”

…

Pentious woke up face-down on a cold metal floor. His head was swimming. Holding his left head against the throbbing behind his eyes, he sat up. At least, he tried to sit up. His head banged against something. He doubled over in pain with a yelp, holding the lump on the back of his head.

It took a moment for his head to stop spinning enough to realize he was in a darkly lit room that smelled absolutely rank, like it had been soaked for decades in urine. He gagged slightly, cupping his hands over his tongue to cut out the stink. Weird animal noises were coming from all around him, along with the sounds of things clanking against prison bars.

He was in a tiny cage with black metal bars. The cage was small enough that he couldn’t even sit up, leaving him feeling horribly cramped. “Where… where am I?” he asked out loud, confused. He coiled up as much as he could, slightly trembling. Waking up in a tiny, strange cage was not a pleasant experience. On top of that, he was cold, and being knocked out had left him with something akin to a killer hang over.

“Welcome to the Pet Shop of Horrors,” a voice laughed. He jumped, as he hadn’t expected an actual answer. His head swiveled back and forth, trying to spot the source of the voice in the darkness. “This is a place that specializes in the trade of rare and mythical creatures, including passing demons off as said creatures.”

“Pet shop???” he responded angrily, hissing. “I am not one’s PET!”

“Yeah, you see those gold cuffs around your wrists with the symbols on them? They say you are. You’re one of the lucky ones, though. I hear you were a special order, which means you’ll be getting out of this place soon. Where you’ll be taken though… could be better, could be worse.”

There was the sound of a door creaking, and a column of light entered the room. He could hear the creatures around him hissing and growling as two men entered the room, the backlight preventing him from making out their features. “Here you are, just as you requested. One of the rarest of serpents, the infamous Naga.”

Pentious tried to speak up to protest, but suddenly he found himself choked. Not a word came out. He touched his throat, confused as to how he had been rendered mute. “What a beautiful creature. Those scales are just glowing, and those eyes are like rubies! It just breaks my heart to see it in such a tiny cage. This room is too cold and too dry! How can you treat such an animal this way? But… are you sure it’s a male? It’s very… feminine. It has to be a male.”

“I verified it myself,” the man said, making the snake demon feel angrily… violated.

“Have him delivered to my place as quickly as possible. The poor thing could get sick in these conditions!”

Two more men appeared from behind the other two. Pentious continued to try to protest, throwing himself against the bars and writhing back and forth as the men lowered a covering over his cage. As the covering came down, his body started to feel heavy again. He was… tired. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. Within minutes, he was collapsed unconscious on the bottom of the cage.

…

“I found something!” Niffty shouted.

“It’s his stupid headband,” Angel noted.

“Look at this,” Husk said, picking up a piece of ragged paper. “Request: Snake demon. Cobra or rattlesnake preferred. Must be male. Over ten feet long, the longer the better. This doesn’t read like someone with a beef against him specifically, but more like someone looking for a type. Almost like they were shopping for snakes.”

"Oh no, he's been snapped! I mean... snake kidnapped!" Charlie cried in alarm. 

“What would anyone want with a dumb snake demon?” Baxter snorted.

“Perhaps someone who wants to eat snake soup,” Alastor suggested.

“Or someone who wants snakeskin accessories,” Angel offered.

“We have to find him! Who knows what horrible things kidnappers could be doing to him!?” Charlie pleaded with the others, her voice and eyes fretful.

…

Pentious was getting a bit tired of waking up in strange places. This time, he was lying in dirt. There was an abundance of green plants around him, like he was in a stereotypical deep jungle. He slowly sat up, trying not to throw up from the nausea caused by his brain going in loops.

He reached up to rub his arms and felt bare scales instead of fabric. Well, that was just great. Waking up in an unknown jungle was one thing. Waking up naked other than those strange gold cuffs on his wrists was another thing. He did not enjoy being a nakey snakey under normal circumstances and enjoyed it even less when he had no idea where he was or why he had been brought there.

He tried sniffing the air, but nothing was familiar. It all smelled like wet dirt, wood, and… paint? Yes, there was a distinct hint of paint in the air. He picked the direction that seemed to have the least number of things he was going to have to crawl over and struck out. His whole body was on high alert, scales prickling and tongue flicking as fast as he could. Not knowing where he was meant not knowing what kind of dangers he could be up against. Going somewhere had to be better than staying absolutely nowhere though, right? He wasn’t going to figure anything out if he just stayed where he was.

He hadn’t been slithering around long when he came up to what he first thought was a giant mirror just plunked in the middle of the jungle. When he got closer to it, squinted at it, he realized he was actually seeing two-way glass. If he cupped his hands around his eyes and pressed his face against it, he could make out the outline of furniture in a room beyond it.

The realization that he was in a demon-snake sized terrarium hit him like a ton of bricks. He bent down and started digging frantically at the dirt beneath him. He didn’t have to dig far before his claws scratched against concrete. When he dug at one of the plants, he discovered it was in a pot.

Someone may be foolish enough to think they could keep him, the great and powerful Sir Pentious, as a pet… but they were wrong. He tried to manifest his chain weapons, hoping to use them to strike the wall… but nothing came. There was a light fizzling sound, but nothing more. He tried to concentrate harder, but his weapon still refused to manifest. He frowned at his hands. This had to have something to do with those shackles.

Still, he had another weapon. He hated resorting to it, because it was going to hurt… but he was a big snake, after all. And he could toss himself against the glass. He did so repeatedly, but just kept bouncing right off. Could it be acrylic instead?

He winded himself trying to break through the barrier with the force of throwing his body against it. He was panting heavily, exhausted, when the rain started to come down. Well, he figured it wasn’t real rain, but it was still cold and coming down in drenching buckets. He did the only thing he could think of and retreated inside a large hollow log, shaking slightly from the cold as water dripped through cracks in his hiding place. After some time, he started to feel warmer, and realized he had to be lying on top of some kind of heat generating surface. Yes, if he touched the roof of the log and then the bottom, he could feel the difference in the temperature. He felt angry and somewhat disgusted that this log had obviously been prepared for him, like the great inventor would be grateful to sleep inside a rotting, dead tree.

The Princess had to notice he was missing soon, right? The only problem was, how would she even begin to think to look for him… wherever he was. Was he even still in Hell? The air didn’t smell right. That tinge of sulfur and copper Hell’s air always had was gone. The water he had tasted before fleeing into the log didn’t taste like Hell’s iron-rich, acidic water either. Was he in a part of Hell he had never been in before? Or was he… no, he couldn’t be on the mortal plane. That didn’t make any sense!

The man who had purchased him, meanwhile, was on the phone. “Yes, the crazy man came through. I have my own Naga now!” he announced proudly. “So… when are you going to bring yours over?”


	2. Giving a sh*t

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sir Pentious tries escape plans A through C... and they all work about as well as you'd expect any Pentious plan to work.

He hoped he would wake up and it would turn out to have been a horrible dream, but no, that wasn’t the way his torturous afterlife went. He woke up still jammed instead the smelly, damp log. He never thought he’d miss waking up in the hotel to the sound of Vaggie screaming at Angel.

He wanted to shower and make coffee, like he did every normal morning. Instead, he was dragging his exhausted self through wet wood chips and dirt. The inside of a log wasn’t even close to being as comfortable as the worst bed he’d ever had. Still, sleeping on the ground wasn’t the worst part of this. Having to wake up without coffee was.

He didn’t have time to sulk about coffee though. He could have as much to drink as he wanted once he escaped. If this place had an entrance, then logically, it also had to have an exit. If he could figure out where the door was, that would be his first step towards escaping. He decided to climb one of the trees, hoping to get a better scope of he was working with.

If he had to guess how much space he was working with, the enclosure seemed to be about the size of a one to two-bedroom apartment with very high ceilings. Someone had clearly put a lot of work and money into outfitting the space with plants. It would be quite the fancy place, if he were, you know, actually a pet snake and not a sentient demon.

It was time for escape plan A: If he could break enough of the lights, someone was going to have to come in and fix them, right? He was still physically strong even if his powers seemed to have been dampened. As much as he hated hand to hand fighting, he reasoned he could overpower a human or two.

The lights were set into the ceiling itself, behind flat covers. He couldn’t quite reach them from the top of the tree. He tried throwing rocks at them, but the rocks just bounced off. Damn. They seemed to be made of that same tough material as the window-mirror. Maybe he just needed to throw a big enough rock...

Wait, that was it! He just had to throw a big enough rock! Onto escape plan B he went. After gathering a bunch of vining plants and braiding them into a rough rope, he started pulling down one of the thinner trees. He bent it as far as he dared without thinking he might break it, then tied it into that position with the vines. Now, he just had to get a rock and he’d have made his own crude catapult. One that he’d aimed directly at the viewing glass. Even if it was acrylic, if he could put enough of a crack in it, he could break through and escape.

He located a sufficiently heavy rock, rolling it back towards his weapon. He didn’t exactly have access to a calculator, or even a pen and paper, so he’d had to guess the trajectory and appropriate size of rock to use to hit the wall off the top of his head. One of the things he hadn’t considered was the strength of his vine rope. As he was settling the rock into place on top of the tree, they snapped, sending both snake and rock flying. The rock landed short of the wall, but the poor snake... he hit it. Hard.

As he slid down the viewing window with a squeaking noise, he realized he hadn’t even put a dent in it with his weight. This was a tougher material than he’d anticipated. Still, the mighty Sir Pentious was not one to give up after one little setback. Although, with his body aching from hitting the wall, perhaps the great Sir Pentious could use a rest break first.

He was lying flat out on the ground when he heard voices. Lifting his head, it took him a moment to realize he could hear people talking on the other side of the glass.

“Isn’t he gorgeous?” he could hear a man with a hint of a Southern accent say. He sounded young. “Cost me quite the fortune but worth every penny! David thinks he’s so high and mighty with his albino king cobra. When he sees my rare snake, he’ll probably shit himself.”

“Is it really fair to keep something that looks... that human... in a cage?” a female voice asked back. He agreed with whoever that was.

“It’s not a cage! It’s a climate-controlled housing environment with the exact right temperature and humidity for a snake. He’s living better than most of my lowest wage employees,” the man laughed. Pentious wasn’t sure he agreed with that statement, although he certainly liked the sentiment behind it. He hadn’t exactly been the nicest to his employees when he was alive. “You should have seen the poor thing when I got to the dealer’s place! He was trapped in a cage so tiny he couldn’t even sit up or stretch his tail. I’ve rescued him! He’s probably grateful to me.”

He wasn’t. That man was the reason he’d been trapped in that tiny cage, after all. He wondered... he opened his hood and tried to activate his hypnotic powers. Let me go, let me go, let me go, he repeated mentally staring at the reflective surface. Could his power go through the glass? Was it even working?

“What’s he doing?”

“He’s fighting his reflection!” the man laughed, and Pentious immediately put his hood down in annoyance. Did this man really think he was a dumb animal? He tried to yell at them, tried to scream that they should let him out, tried to tell them they were going to pay for this indignity. Once again, no sound came out other than a growly hiss.

Well, losing his voice didn’t mean losing all ability to communicate. He did the first thing that came to his mind. Which was to flip the humans on the other side of the glass off with both hands. Normally, he would have found this a classless display. Now though? He felt like they deserved it. To his dismay, they found the gesture hilarious. He banged his head against the glass in annoyance.

The idea that if he could get someone into the cage, he could escape was still in his head. An idea formed in the back of his head, but he pushed it away. If he did something to ruin the human’s nice view of his prison… No, that was too disgusting. He couldn’t. Or could he? As crude as it was, and as much as he preferred to be a gentleman, sometimes vulgar situations called for vulgar solutions.

.

“Excuse me, have you seen this demon?” Charlie asked a random cat demon who just happened to walk by. They raised an eyebrow at the photos, shook their head no, and continued walking. The only photos they’d had of their missing snake came from his Voxstagram, and they were... not very good photos, to be honest.

A few hired hell hounds had been able to track his scent to the wall, where it suddenly disappeared. Likely, this meant he had been taken through a portal. He could be anywhere in the pride ring, and despite being only one of the seven rings, it was large enough that searching all of it would have been impractical. The idea that he might be on the moral plane hadn’t even crossed their minds.

A grumbling Angel was helping Charlie to put up missing posters. Now that Angel thought about it, he’d never seen a missing poster in Hell before, yet demons surely went missing from time to time, didn’t they? Was it just that no one cared? Why hadn’t he seen any posters after an extermination? Did everyone just assume anyone they couldn’t find had been erased and go on with their afterlives? If he didn’t live at the hotel, would anyone notice if he went missing? Other than Val, being upset he wasn’t at work, making money? If he went missing, who would feed Nuggets?! He couldn’t imagine poor Nuggets waiting alone for him, not understanding why he wasn’t coming back. It brought tears to his eyes.

“Aw, Angel, I know it’s sad, but don’t worry, we’ll find him!” Charlie cheered him on, mistaking the reason for his tears. He decided not to correct her. Let her think he actually gave a crap about Sir Edgelord.

…

Speaking of crap…

Well, to put it bluntly, escape plan C had been an utter and rather humiliating failure. He’d been absolutely certain that taking a shit directly in the center of the viewing area would lead to them sending someone in to clean it up. That would have given him the opportunity to escape when the door opened. Except, they hadn’t. They’d just... left it. He thought perhaps they were waiting for him to leave the area, but he’d hidden and waited for what felt like hours, and the only thing that happened was... he was now locked in an enclosure with shit on the ground.

At least the space was large enough that he didn’t have to stay in the same vicinity and keep staring at it, or worse, smelling it. He’d noticed a small pool or pond when he’d been up the tree, before he’d launched himself into the window, and headed there. It was just the right size to accommodate his body. If there was any one thing he liked in this place, it was this water. Finding a bathtub he could fit in was a chore even in Hell, where creatures like elephant demons roamed. He was glad it was heated, as he needed a hot soak after what he’d been through the last two days. Maybe I can drown myself and I’ll regenerate in Hell, he thought, sinking in until only his face-eyes were above water.

He heard some rustling in the foliage, drawing his attention to the edge of the pool. Had his face not been mostly under water, he would have smelled what it was before he saw it. A rather large rat was standing on the side of the water, twitching its whiskers. Caught by surprise, he jumped out of the water and nearly jumped out of his skin as the rat scuttled off, equally scared. He let out a high-pitched squeal-scream in the process.

He watched for his heart to stop pounding like it was trying to burst from his chest, trying to calm himself with deep breaths. He had been surprised to hear his own voice again. I can still scream, and hiss, he thought. That was good to know. But why was there a rat in this fancy-pants enclosure? If there was a rat, that means the rat had to have gotten in somehow! That meant there was at least a rat sized hole. He would take a rat sized hole. It would at least be a start.

Unless… a sinking thought came into his mind as he sank in the water. Unless that rat was intended to be his meal. He was disgusted and insulted. Him, a gentleman with a noble history, reduced to eating rats?? And without even being offered the courtesy of any condiments? He’d rather starve.

That gave him an idea. If he was starving, he’d get sick. If he was sick, or if they at least thought he was sick, they’d have to send someone in to look at him, right? And that meant he could take the doctor hostage and use him to escape. Feigning illness was the perfect escape plan D!


	3. Rats! Foiled again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being a snake is harder than Sir Pentious thought.

“You are not Sir Pentious, and you can’t turn yourself in for the reward,” Vaggie groaned, annoyed by the stupidity of the snake demon in front of her.

“Yes I am!” he protested. “I look exactly like the picture!”

“You painted yourself black,” she argued back.

“No I didn’t!”

“The paint is still WET. I can see it dripping. And your supposed eyes are just red solo cups that you’ve cut the bottom off of! They’re not even properly shaped!”

“Are you trying to hold me to unrealistic snake beauty standards?” The scammer snake snapped back.

Husk decided to cut this annoying shouting match forward. He dumped a bucket of water over the snake’s head, which washed away a significant amount of the black paint and the tape holding some of the eyes in place. The snake took a moment to reconsider the situation, then bolted.

“Husk!” Niffty said angrily, taking to mopping up the wet mess on the floor before it stained.

“What’s the tally now?” he asked Vaggie.

“Four fake snakes, and more useless dead-end so-called tips than I care to count,” she responded. “Where could that stupid snake be?”

“I hope we find him soon. Without him around, his minions are out of control.” As if to emphasize Vaggie’s point, three Egg Bois came sliding down the stairway banister.

“Whoo, boss is gone, post ponies!” one cheered as they jumped off the stairs and ran off. A moment later, there was a loud crash from another part of the hotel.

.

The real Sir Pentious was currently hiding inside his log, having had insult added to injury. Plan D had started out so promising. When the man with the Southern accent and the doctor entered the enclosure, he had suddenly found himself unable to move anything other than his eyes. He’d been shocked and frantic, tensing and struggling. Why couldn’t he move? What was going on?

The man with the accent approached him and reached out to touch his hair. He wanted to pull away and recoil, but he couldn’t. He was absolutely disgusted with the way the man cradled his head in his lap, stroking his hair. “There, there, baby. Don’t be scared. The doctor’s just going to check you out.” His eyes fell on a gold key around the man’s neck that had the same symbols as his shackles. He suddenly understood. That key was controlling him. If he could only get that key…

But he hadn’t been able to break through and get the key. Now, his arm was sore from where they’d done a blood draw, and he had been… inappropriately violated with a frigid cold thermometer, to put it as delicately as he possibly could. Worse, the quack of a doctor had insulted his acting abilities by saying he wasn’t really sick, that he was just throwing a quote ‘snake temper tantrum.’ “He’s probably just upset over the move to the new environment. It’s common for snakes to not eat for a while when they’re upset. Give him some time, try different foods, and add some enrichment to his environment. He might be acting out because he’s bored.”

Imagine someone accusing him, the future ruler of Hell, as ‘acting out’ and ‘throwing a temper tantrum.’ It was beyond insulting. It was worthy of retribution. When he got out, that doctor was on his hit list. He’d heard of some imps who took care of things like that, and he had more than enough money stashed back home to take care of such a thing. Just so long as the princess didn’t find out. He was supposed to be going for redemption, after all. Even though in reality, his reason for joining the hotel was the hopes that getting close to the royal family would allow him to find weaknesses he could exploit in his conquest of Hell.

Speaking of the princess, he wondered why she hadn’t sent anyone to save him. Did she not know where he was? Did she not notice he was missing? Did she not care? Or maybe she was just too incompetent to rescue him. He couldn’t put his faith in other demons. No one else was as smart, as clever, or as evil as he was. He was going to have to rely on himself to get out of this situation.

Although… maybe that was it. Maybe she didn’t know he’d been taken to the mortal world. If he could communicate with her, perhaps she’d send someone to break him out. But how could he reach her? With his powers not working, he didn’t know how to get a message to Hell.

He paused in his thoughts, letting them role around in his head. Or DID he? He knew spirt boards worked. He’d never been on the receiving end of one himself, but he’d heard from other demons who had used them. If spirit boards could talk to demons, perhaps he could get a message to Hell that way. He just needed something to write with to create one, and something to use as a mock planchet. He thought about trying to just scratch the letters in the dirt, but they would smear too easily. He needed something more permeant.

The idea of what he could use as ink hit him, and he smiled at his own intelligence. Now, where was that stupid rat?

.

He followed his tongue to the scent of the rat. They stupid, unsuspecting rodent sat in the open, washing its ears with its paws. It suddenly lifted its nose, smelling the air, then took off running. A split-second later, Pentious’ failed pounce landed him face-first in the ground with crushing force, utterly missing his rat target. He ended up spitting out wood chips, including having to pull off a chunk that was stuck on one of his fangs. He shook his head, his ears ringing from the pain of the impact.

He’d never had to hunt with this snake body before. At least, he’d never had to hunt anything that wasn’t another demon. He didn’t exactly know what he was doing. Still, he was the great Sir Pentious. There was nothing a snake could do that he couldn’t do. He was going to catch that rat.

He found the rat again by its body heat. He crouched down low in the foliage, peering at it. Husk always wiggled his butt before pouncing. Maybe that was an important part of the pouncing process. Couldn’t hurt to try it himself. Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle… jump!

His head slammed into a rock as the rat once again fled, squealing and squeaking into the brush. This hunting thing was harder than he thought it would be, he realized as he rubbed his head. How did normal snakes do this? Well… maybe that was the problem. This was a job for an ordinary snake, and he was an extraordinary snake. He wasn’t ready to give up yet, though.

As he was pushing his way through the leaves, he suddenly found himself face-to-face with… another snake demon?? He thought he was hallucinating from hitting his head at first. She was colored like you’d expect a stereotypical snake-person to be, emerald green outer scales with a gold-yellow belly. Her eyes were huge and black, and her hood-hair was a brilliant golden-yellow with some lime green in it. She had more of a snout than he did. At least, he guessed it was a she from the prominent, exposed breasts. He flushed slightly, feeling it rude to be staring at a naked woman.

That was, he felt bad until she reacted by hissing at him, baring her fangs and flaring her own hood. She lunged forward, striking at him, and he barely reacted in time to jump away from her. She was still growl-hissing.

Who the hell did this stranger think she was, to lunge at him?? He drew himself up fully, extending his own hood as he glowered back at her. She made another forward strike at him. He dodged her sideways this time, not wanting to relent any ground to her forward push.

They circled each other, hissing and posturing with hoods extended, for several minutes before she suddenly turned and fled. He chased her only a short distance before stopping, as he could smell the rat. The rat was a bigger concern for him now, as the rat was his key to escaping. Whoever that was, as long as they stayed out of his way, he frankly didn’t care. He’d deal with the interloper later if she chose to cross him again.

.

“Can you feel the love tonight?” a woman asked coldly, her voice dripping sarcasm. She and the man who had purchased Pentious were looking at the cameras that dotted the serpent enclosure.

“It’s natural for two animals to fight a bit when they’re first introduced,” the man answered. “Let them settle down a bit.”

“Frankly… my mother bought her. She was my mother’s spoiled pet. Now that my mother is dead, I really have no interest in the time or expense it takes to maintain a creature like her. The costs of keeping her fed alone are ridiculous. She’s all yours.”

“Thank you. That’s why I went through the trouble of seeking out a male. The idea of having a breeding pair of rare nagas excites me,” the man grinned. Let’s just be blunt about his motivation. He wanted to watch humanoid snakes fuck. “Their eggs would be worth a fortune to magic practitioners.”

.

Pentious had a headache. He was covered with bumps and bruises, filthy with dirt from the number of dives he’d taken into the ground. He’d done it! He’d caught the damned rat! Well… it was more by accident than by design, but still, he’d gotten results. That was what really mattered. Since his venom wasn’t lethal to other Hell creatures, he’d never actually killed anything with his bite before. He hadn’t been prepared for how unpleasant it really was, trying to hold a squirming and squealing animal in his jaws while it died. It wasn’t something he wanted to do again anytime soon. He preferred to let his machines do his dirty work for him.

He retreated back to his log, as he’d hidden a piece of wood there that he felt was perfect for creating a spirit board on… only to be annoyed when he was once again confronted with the other snake, hiding inside of _his_ log. He didn’t like the log, damn it, but it was his!

“Get out of my log!” he snapped, suddenly shocked. He could… speak?! Why could he suddenly speak again?

“Fuck off. It’s my log now,” she answered.

He didn’t have time for this. He had to get the spirit board made before the rat blood coagulated too much. “If you won’t get out of my log, then I’ll have to drag you out!” he threatened.

“You wouldn’t dare,” she snarled.

He didn’t have any sleeves, or he would have rolled them up. He grabbed her by her silly green and yellow tail and started pulling. She lunged forward and bit him, snapping her jaws around his arm. It hurt, but it gave him additional leverage. Between having her tail in one hand and fighting with her grip on his other arm, the two of them did a weird snake-dance in a circle before he managed to force her out of the log. He had to use the end of his tail to repeatedly slap her back and forth across her face enough to get her to let go of his arm. She fell onto her back, panting as he loomed over her.

She raised her arms over her face. “P… please!” she pleaded. “Don’t rape me!”

He froze in confusion. “Excuse me? I would never do such a horrid thing! I maybe a murderer, but I am also a gentleman!” he answered her, angry at the accusation. “Now, I have more important things to do than fight with you,” he said, picking up his rat and diving into his log to work on his spirit board.

She seemed… utterly confused. “You… you aren’t going to have sex with me?” she asked.

“I thought you just indicated that you did not want to have sex with me,” he answered, trying to ignore her as he used his claws to open the rat and dip his claws in the blood. It was disgusting, but it was necessary. He started writing out the letters on his flat piece of wood.

“But… you’re… I’m… you’re a male snake. I’m a female snake.” Despite her protests earlier, she almost sounded disappointed. She was confusing the Hell out of him.

“Excuse me, but could we have this conversation later? I need to concentrate on this right now.”

The female snake retreated back, perplexed as to what was happening. In her mind, she could still remember what had happened to her. She could still remember the horrible day her previous Master died. Her previous Master had loved her, doted on her, treated her like a spoiled princess. Perhaps that was why her Master’s daughter had… had….

“I hate you,” the girl had snarled through the enclosure bars as she was being dragged out of her home into a transportation cell. “Mother bought you. Mother gave you more attention than she ever gave me. You got better food, more of her time, your room was better than mine… I just… I just hate you. Mom’s dead and I’m not spending any more money on her pet abomination. I just finished up the agreements to get rid of you. I’ve sold you to a man who plans to get a male serpent. You’re going to fall from being my mother’s special pet to nothing more than a breeding bitch, and I’m going to enjoy watching you suffer.”

She’d lost her beloved Master, her home, all of her comforts, and was being sold off to what her vicious new Master had said was going to be forced into sexual slavery. But now she was face-to-face with the male snake that she had been dreading and he had no interest in her? What was happening?

“What’s your problem? Do you think I’m ugly or something?!”

Pentious slapped his face with his palm. “Could you please stop? I am working on a brilliant plan that will get me out of this prison.”

“Escape? You think we can escape with… with these things?” she asked, referring to her own shackles.

“I have friends in high places. In fact, I’m friends with the princess of Hell herself,” he boasted. “I am making a spirit board to communicate my location and need of rescue to the princess,” he answered. “There, the lettering is complete! Once it dries, I simply have to locate something I can use as a viewing glass.”

Great, she thought. He’s delusional. Must have gone insane from too much time in isolation with no one to talk to. He backed out of the log. “Do not disturb my work while it dries or you will see how vicious I can really be,” he hissed at her. “If you will excuse me for a moment, I have a message to send. This does not mean you can take my log.”

Okay, now she was curious. She followed him. He slithered all the way back to the viewing glass, then wound up his arm with the rat clutched by the tail… and flung it at the viewing window. He couldn’t see it, but the man on the other side jumped when the rat hit the window and splattered blood and guts all over it. “… I take it he is displeased with the rat,” the man commented dryly, and this pleased Pentious, who smiled smugly as he decided to return to his log.

The female snake followed him. She could feel drops of water on her scales. The overhead sprinklers had started to mist. She didn’t want to be cold and wet, and there was more than enough room in that log for two. “Move over,” she ordered, crawling in with him.

“Wait, what? Get off me!” he demanded.

“Stop it! You said you were a gentleman, right? What gentleman would leave a lady out in the rain?”

“I have yet to see any evidence that you are a lady, considering that you bit me,” he snapped, trying to focus on keeping his writing steady with her crawling on him. “You’re heavy!”

“Don’t you know better than to insult a lady’s weight?” she snarled, squeezing in next to him. It was a tight fit, but both snakes could make it in the log.

“… One question that is bothering me. Why can I speak to you, but not to the humans?”

“I don’t know how these magic chain things work, either. I’ve only had one Master, and before she died… she took very good care of me.”

“Well, I do not intend to have ANY Masters, and I am not going to stop until I get out of here. Now if you will excuse me, I need to rest my brilliant mind so that I can continue my excellent plan once I’m sufficiently rested. With that, they glared at one another, huffing and posturing, until they both got tired enough to slip into an uncomfortable slumber.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mods are asleep, post ponies!


	4. Snakes and Ladders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The chapter in which Sir Pentious sucks at being a snake.

The immediate first problem the two snakes discovered the following day was… they were stuck. They’d twisted around enough in the log trying to sleep fitfully that they couldn’t quite fit back out. It took a lot of pushing and huffing and screams of “ow” before they managed to pop out like a very cranky cork. After dusting himself off, Pentious started out. He had things to do if he was going to finish escape plan E.

“What cha dooooooooing?” the female snake asked as she followed him, getting Pentious’ hood up. She was obnoxious, and she was distracting him from his brilliant plans.

“I am looking for a clear object or a round object with a hole in it that I can use as a viewing window. If you would, please make yourself useful by helping me look for one instead of annoying me.”

“But I haven’t had another snake to talk to in… well, in decades!” she said, peeking over his shoulder. She was too close for his comfort.

“If you help me find something to use so that we can escape, you can talk to many snakes. Lots of snakes. Just not me,” he answered with a hiss, still hunting for a broken hollow tree branch or a piece of discarded plexiglass. She was not going to leave him alone, was she? “What is your name, anyway?”

“Snake,” she answered.

“Snake? That’s a… a type of animal, not a name!”

“Then what’s your name, Mr. High and Mighty?” she snorted, watching him continue to look for a viewing piece. At the same time, she was trying to pose in a sexy manner. Her attempts were so ridiculous that even if Pentious weren’t completely oblivious to subtext, he likely wouldn’t have gotten what she was trying to do. He thought she had a backache she was trying to stretch out.

“I, missy, am the great evil genius and future Overlord of Hell, Sir Pentious,” he announced in a grandiose manner to her, puffing himself up.

“I can’t be snake, but you can be serpent?” she asked, frowning at him.

“It’s a clever play on words to immediately indicate my intelligence to others! First impressions are important!” he emphasized back to her, pointing at her with one finger. She thought about biting him again.

“My first impression would be that you’re a silly doof,” she answered.

“I do not wish to be called a silly ‘doof’ by a snake named snake.” He tried to slither away to look in another spot, but she continued to follow him. It wasn’t like he had a real way to get away from her.

“It’s what my previous Master always called me,” she answered.

“What were you called before you were captured?” he asked.

She stopped in her tracks and frowned. “I… I can’t remember. To be honest, I can’t remember anything from before my first Master. I think that might be a side effect of the magic restraints.”

That got Pentious to freeze in place. If she was correct, and the magic restraints reduced memory… He quickly tried to think over everything from his life in Hell. It all seemed to be intact. Maybe it was just her problem, but now he was on high alert. He had to get out of there before losing his mind, if there was even the slightest chance of it. “Well, perhaps we should give you a new name. Since I am brilliant, I will think of one for you. Give me one moment to…”

“Cher Pentious!” she said brightly. “C-h-e-r but pronounced shir instead of share.”

“You can’t… can’t just steal my name!” he sputtered angrily, glaring at her. The audacity of this bitch! “You… you… empty headed plagiarist!”

“Why not, you stuffed-shirt pompous fool?” she asked.

“Because it’s _my name_!”

“It’s a clever play on words to immediately indicate my intelligence to others, because first impressions are important,” she responded, grinning and flicking her tongue at him.

“Ironically, a certain individual named Cherri is also a thorn in my side,” he grunt-grumbled back at her. “You two would get along. You both enjoy annoying me with your childish antics.”

“I’m only being childish specifically _because_ it annoys you… Hey, where you going?” she asked, wrapping her arms around him from behind and snuggling his back. Pentious flushed, feeling the weight of her naked, round breasts pressed against his skin.

“I… I told you, I have to find a view finder so I can continue my brilliant plan to get back to Hell,” he stammered.

“Why are you so desperate to get back to Hell? Isn’t Hell like… a bad place?” she asked, pouting.

“Because in Hell, I have a warm bed, coffee, technology, a bunch of loyal minions to obey my every whim and do my bidding…”

…

Speaking of loyal minions, those loyal minions were being a royal pain in the arse back at the hotel. One had a camera and was filming another one flashing the camera. “WWWOOOO, Eggs gone wild!” another cheered.

“We’re scrambled and we like it!” another cheered. They had snatched their boss’ phone, guessed his password, and were posting their egg videos to their boss’ Voxtagram. Actually, they’d been posting so much that they’d accidentally gotten their boss’ Voxtagram banned, and had now started their own, ahem, egg-count.

“We’re even pickled!” another agreed, chugging the booze he’d snatched from the bar.

“… Anthony, what’s with all the bad eggs?” Arackniss asked when he came to visit, seeing them running around the hotel.

“Egglord is missing in action, and his minions have gone off the rails,” Angel answered, chasing down rogue eggs.

“You mean the snake? The tall, black and yellow snake with the really nice hair and the shiny red eyes?”

“Ooooooh, Niss, sounds like you got a crush on him,” Angel taunted.

“I… I can appreciate when another man looks nice without being gay. Not that I would expect you to know that. Everything is about sex with you,” Arackniss answered, rolling his eyes. “Hey. HEY!” Arackniss shouted, clapping his hands loudly. “All of you eggs!” The partying Egg Bois looked over at him. “You all have five minutes to get back in your room before I start making omelets for lunch.”

They didn’t take him seriously, laughing and snorting. That was, until Arackniss went to the kitchen, and returned with a battery-operated mixer. That sent them flying back to Pentious’ room, screaming as he chased them with a kitchen utensil. Arackniss was nothing if not a great problem-solver.

“Maybe I can help you think of new angles to investigate to find him,” Arackniss suggested once he’d taken care of the eggs. He’d… made a few people and demons disappear in his time on Earth and in Hell. He knew a few things about where people who went missing tended to end up.

…

Back in the mortal realm, Pentious sniffed the air with his tongue. “What is that… stink?” he asked, cringing slightly away from it.

Cher sniffed as well. “Piglets!” she said, delighted. “What’s wrong?” she asked, noticing his disgusted expression. “Piglets are some of the best snake snacks!”

“…This is why I want to go back to Hell. I would be having my pig properly butchered on top of a hot wood-fired pizza,” he sighed.

“Does that mean you don’t know how to hunt like a proper snake?”

“I… I am the mighty and powerful snake demon Sir Pentious! There is nothing I can’t do!” he flexed his arms to emphasize his point.

“Then prove it. Go catch us dinner,” Cher grinned at him.

.

Cher watched him as he looked through the leaves at the piglets. They were bigger than the rat, and probably slower, and he’d caught the rat, hadn’t he? He took a deep breath. He could do this. He just had to steady his aim, and pounce.

He landed right next to one of the piglets. He tried to grab it with his clawed hands, but holding onto a squealing, thrashing piglet was harder than he thought it would be. Every time he thought he’d gotten his coils around it, it popped back out. It even kicked him in the face before he lost his grip on it, sending both pigs fleeing in opposite directions. Damn it. He should have spent more time watching how Angel managed to catch Nuggets for his baths.

Cher was laughing hysterically, doubled over as her body shook. “What… what the hell was that?! Even an ass wiggle like you’re a freaking cat? We’re cobras. We don’t pounce, we strike!” she continued to laugh, having to wipe the tears from her eyes.

“I… I caught my scales on a piece of wood and tripped,” he said indignantly, rubbing his injured eye. “I… I do know how to hunt; I am just a bit rusty on my technique.” 

“Okay, okay, I believe you. Ah… since you _clearly_ don’t need any help and I wouldn’t want to slither on your scales, why don’t you go after the pig that went left, and I’ll go after the pig that went right?” she suggested. “We can meet back up at the nest once we’ve both eaten.”

“That is agreeable to me,” he said. He had… he had missed because her staring at him made him self-conscious. Things would go much better without her breathing down his neck. At least, that was what he told himself. He didn’t know how a piglet could be harder to catch than a rat, but it was. After diving through the trees to try to catch one of the piglets, he ended up trapped between two thick tree branches. He was stuck hanging in the air, trapped at the hips, and feeling very sorry for himself.

He heard a snickering giggle and didn’t want to raise his head because he knew exactly who it was. “Mighty hunter, huh?” she asked. “If you want me to get you down from there, you’re going to have to say please.”

“This… this is part of my hunting technique!” he argued. “I hang up here and wait for the pig to walk under me, and then I snap it up.”

“I’ve been watching you try to free yourself for at least ten minutes,” she responded, snorting. “Look, I’m not laughing at you per se. I’m laughing at the fact that your male pride won’t let you just say there are some things you don’t know how to do. I’m sure there are things you can do that I can’t, and there’s no shame in that. Come on now, just say please and I’ll push up on the outer branch and you can slide backwards out of there.”

He gritted his teeth. “Please,” he grunted.

“I could have used more sincerity, but I’ll take what I can get,” Cher shrugged, pushing up on the branch as promised. He managed to squirm backwards, falling out of the tree and onto the ground.

“You’re all scraped up,” Cher noted, helping him get back upright.

“I need to clean these cuts out before they get infected,” he sighed, studying his poor, injured back as best he could. Oh, the insult to his beautiful scales!

He was sulking in the water when Cher returned, spitting out a piglet directly onto the ground next to him, causing him to jump slightly. “I brought you dinner,” she said calmly.

“Is this… is this really how you are used to eating?” he asked, eyeing the pig and edging away from it.

“I mean, we’re snakes, right? Come on, eat it before it gets cold. They’re better warm,” she said, continuing to push it towards him. “Once you eat, I found something I think you’ll want to see,” she said proudly. He internally moaned. This… this was truly the real Hell.

“… Why don’t you like me?” she asked suddenly, startling him. “Do you… do you think I’m ugly?” It was an unexpected question.

“Why… why don’t _I_ like _you_? Excuse me, _missy_ , but it was you who accused me of being a rapist when we first met! I would never force myself on an unwilling woman! I am a civilized being! You insulted me!” he responded with an angry tongue flick.

“Isn’t that how it works? We’re… we’re wild animals.”

“I think you have read too many cheap bodice-rippers,” he hissed. “They did warn about the dangers of letting women read novels back in my day, and they seem to have been right.”

“There’s… there’s no reason to be a sexist pig about it. In fact, here’s your pig, you pig!” she said, throwing it in the water with him. "And you can keep your stupid name, I don't want it!" she hissed before slithering off in a huff. Women, he thought. He just did not understand them!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OC CHARACTER PROFILE
> 
> Demon Name: “Snake” or “Cher Pentious” (pronounced Shir Pentious) or just “Cher” (pronounced like the first part of Shirley) or "Zen" (she has a lot of names, okay?)
> 
> Real Name: Unknown
> 
> Age at time of death: 20
> 
> Physical appearance: Her outer scales are three shades of green, all close to emerald in color. She has a few purple scales as well, but they’re difficult to see against the green. Her inner belly scales, which start just above her breasts, are a gold color, making them darker than Pentious’ inner scales. She’s a foot longer than he is, but she slithers lower to the ground, so she looks shorter when they’re standing together. Her hood hair is yellow with lime green highlights. Two strands of her hood hair always stay down over the top of her breasts, like a mermaid using hair as a modesty cover.
> 
> Her eyes are so dark they appear solid black. She does not have extra eyes, although the highlights in her hood look like eye spots. She has more of a serpentine face than Pentious does, with a more prominent snout. She is quite solidly built, and if it came down to it, could probably beat Pentious in a physical fight.
> 
> Cause of death/reason she ended up in Hell: Drinking and driving. She was the one who was drunk, and she hit and killed two innocent people, landing herself in Hell.
> 
> Personality: The reason she seems so childish is that she died as a college party girl. Mentally, she’s still quite young. She claims she likes television, although, watching television was really the only thing she had to do for the previous few decades she was being kept as a pet demon. So, it’s not sure if she ‘likes’ it or if that’s all she knows. Her time only having interactions with her ‘Master’ left her socially awkward and somewhat mentally stunted, as she was basically in a very nice solitary confinement cell.


	5. Horny Jail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pentious is stuck in jail with a very horny lady snake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I moved some of the events that were in the previous chapter originally over to this chapter because I wanted to change the flow. If some things seem repetitive, this would be why.
> 
> ALSO: I'm adding tags as they become relevant to the story, so don't rule out a spider snake 3-way in the future yet :P :P :P

As the fake night settled in it had started to fake rain again, this time accompanied by fake thunder. Perhaps that was what Pentious disliked most about this place and about Hell. They were both so artificial. By the time he got back to his log, he was surprised to see Cher wasn’t sulking there. Well, more room for him. He squeezed himself inside, making sure his spirit board was in a dry place. He hadn’t found a viewing window that day, but he was sure he’d find one tomorrow.

As the rain and thunder continued, he couldn’t sleep. He just kept tossing back and forth. Where was she? She couldn’t be out there in the cold and the wet just to spite him, could she? Well, it wasn’t his problem if she was.

Except… he sighed. Except it was. He crawled out into the rain with a sigh. “Snake?” he called. “Snake?” after getting no response, he tried, “Cher? Cher?” Nothing. Okay, Pentious. You failed at using your snake instincts earlier today, he thought. Now’s the time to prove yourself. You can do this! He sniffed the air, tongue out, and within a few moments, he’d caught her scent.

Her scent guided him to a mound of dirt. He’d spotted it when he’d been climbing, but it hadn’t caught his attention too much. Now, though, he saw what he’d missed: there was a snake-demon sized opening in it. Inside was a cavern just the right size to accommodate two snake demons, either stretched out on the ground or moving around slightly lowered from their usual high slithering positions. He was rather flustered to realize that this probably had been intended to be his nest all along, not that stupid log. Now he couldn’t lay claim to it as his exclusively because he’d hadn’t found it first, she had. So, either he had to relent this space to her and continue living in a leaky log, or… share.

Speaking of the female snake, she was curled up against a back wall, head in her scales, sniffling. “Miss… Cher?” he asked.

“Go away, jerk face.”

“Perhaps we… got off on the wrong scales. We should start again. I am Sir Pentious. And you are?” he said, slithering over to her side. It wasn’t really that he felt bad for her, despite him acting as though it was. It was that he wanted a piece of the larger space.

“… Actually... I do have a name. It's Zen,” she sniffed. "I just thought maybe you'd like me more if I shared your name.” She put her head on his shoulder, causing him to flush slightly. “I’m just… tired. Goodnight, Sir.” She kept rubbing her cheek against his shoulder. Lucifer be damned. He knew he was sexy, but he didn’t know he was that sexy. He was clearly too much for the poor girl’s mind. He hoped he could get word to the princess to send help quickly. Being trapped in a cage and treated like a wild animal for the amusement of a rich man was one thing. Being trapped in that cage with a crazy woman was another. Hopefully, those back in Hell were also still looking for him.

“… Goodnight, Zen,” he finally sighed. So he may have killed a few people when he was alive. Was that really enough to deserve this?

.

Meanwhile, back in literal Hell, Baxter dove where Arackniss had directed him. He was holding a laminated missing poster for Pentious, to keep it from getting wet. As he saw down, he saw it. It made him shiver. A field of demons the mob had encased in cement shoes and sent to the bottom of the pride ring’s sea… all still alive, of course, as drowning was not a method that could kill demons. “He-hello?” he said nervously, as they all looked at him with dull eyes. “Have… have any of you seen this snake?” he stammered.

They didn’t respond. He looked around but didn’t see anyone matching Pentious’ size or shape. “Darn, dead end. I would have taken them back to the surface to be interrogated if they knew anything,” he said to himself. Suddenly, the demons were active. They were all shaking their heads yes, frantically, but it was too late. Baxter was swimming for the surface, not looking back. Which was just as well, as clearly, they had not seen Pentious. They just wanted to get out of the water.

Baxter popped his head above the surface. “Not down there,” he informed the demons on the dock.

“I checked all our black sites too. That rules out that the spider mafia had anything to do with his disappearance,” Arackniss noted.

“Isn’t it… isn’t it kind of… bad to have all those demons cemented to the bottom of the river?” Charlie asked, a bit put off by the whole deal.

“Cement wears away with time and waves. Eventually, they get free, and they will have learned an important lesson about not screwing with us by that time,” Arackniss shrugged.

“Your brother scares me,” Baxter whispered to Angel.

“Yeah, no shit,” the taller spider shrugged in response. “I wonder where Egglord could be.”

.

Pentious was breathing hard, practically gasping for air. His heart was racing like it was going to explode out of his chest, and his whole body was shaking with rage. Lying on the ground in front of him was a scene of mechanical carnage. What remained of a drone was smashed over a significant area of foliage. He still had part of it wrapped in the end of his tail. He rubbed his head, only then realizing that he was smearing around blood from cuts on his hands and tail.

“You saved me, my hero,” Zen purred, rubbing her head against his back as she coiled around him. He was slightly annoyed. She’d called him her hero, but he wasn’t a hero. He was evil, pure evil, the very definition of a villain! Also, he couldn’t breathe in her crushing coils.

Why had he destroyed the drone? Well, perhaps that wasn’t the right question. When he saw it, his first thought was that it could be spare parts. If he could get the pieces of that drone, not only would one likely be a suitable viewfinder, but he could start building an escape weapon out of them. What he didn’t know was why he’d so utterly annihilated it. Something about it had just… made him angry. Irrationally angry. He remembered seeing red. Literally, a screen of blood-red anger covered his vision. The next thing he was conscious of was coming to with the drone smashed to pieces, with cuts on his arms and tail that indicated it had tried and failed to escape from his rage. He didn’t understand. Why had he gone absolutely insane over just a drone?

After cleaning his cuts, he managed to find a piece of rounded log that he could start placing the broken pieces of the drone into. As he was working, he noticed Zen wouldn’t stop staring at him and flicking her tongue. He wouldn’t admit it, but he was slightly worried about her mental state. “You okay?” he finally asked her, slightly unnerved by her staring at him. Her eyes kept drifting uncomfortably towards his hips, and every time they did, she would make a particularly long tongue flick.

“After that big, strong display of masculinity… I’m thirsty,” she responded, crawling closer. 

“Oh, well, then you should get something to drink,” Pentious answered, the reference going completely over his head.

“I want a cool, tall glass of snake man to drink,” she said, slithering still closer to him, wrapping herself around his back again. He’d just gotten her off minutes before. Off his back, that was! Not like that. Pervs. “Really, please tell me. Is there something wrong with me?”

“If you must know, I… it is not that you are unattractive, it is that I already have my eyes on someone else. Tiny little cute spider paws, the loveliest dark fur, lots of piercing red eyes, rippling muscles all packed on a compact body, four arms, a deadly aim…” the snake sounded like he was about to swoon. “Too bad he’s the brother of one of my sworn enemies.”

“Oh, so you are totally gaaaaaaaaaaaaaay,” the female snake teased, starting to come back out of her shell.

“Missy, I am bisexual, I will not stand by bi-erasure.”

She kind of hiccupped. “But… but the problem is, my Master sold me to your Master to be your mate. If you reject me, he might sell me again, and I already… I already lost my home and everything once! I can’t…”

“We’re going to get out of here before that can happen. With these parts to finish my spirit board, I'm... I’m sure the princess will rescue you as well!”

“You’ll drag me to Hell!?”

“You don’t have to put it so dramatically,” he responded, shaking his head as he was unable to understand her.

“Promise me then. Promise me you won’t leave me. Ever.”

He should have listened closer to her statement before he answered. “I promise.” 

.

“I’ve checked all the studios. Val doesn’t have him,” Angel said.

“We’ve been up and down every bar, hostel, hotel, and flop house in Snaketown. He’s not there either, and no one can prove they’ve seen him, even for the reward,” Vaggie groaned. Her legs hurt from the amount of walking they’d had to do in a place ironically built for demons that slithered.

“We’re running out of places to look,” Charlie said with a sigh. “If only we had some clue to go on.”

.

“So, this thing is a… spirit board?” Zen asked, poking it with her tail.

“Yes, a means of communicating with the demon world. If I can send a message back to the princess advising her of my situation, we can get out of here. But a spirit board needs two to use. I need your help with it.”

“Okay. Tell me what to do.”

.

“Is princess Charlie available? Princess Charlie?” he asked as they sat at the spirit board. No response.

“Maybe you should aim a little lower than the princess,” Zen suggested. “Aren’t there any lesser demons you know who can take a message to her?”

“The least two demons I know, I wouldn’t trust my salvation with,” he hissed. In his mind, he was thinking of Baxter and Angel.

“Someone a little higher than them, then?”

Hm. As far as he knew, Vaggie would be more than happy to let him rot in the mortal realm. Niffty, maybe? Or Husk? He wasn’t sure either of them knew how to use a spirit board. In fact, now that he thought about it, the only one he’d ever even heard mention spirit boards before was... was...

“What’s wrong? Your face just got all funny,” Zen pointed out.

The idea of asking Alastor for a rescue was not one he enjoyed, as he knew the deer would rub it in his face for the rest of his afterlife. What other options did he have, though? He was the only one Pentious knew for sure had communicated with the mortal realm at all, let alone with a spirit board.

.

As the group was sitting around discussing their missing snake, there was suddenly a Bzzz Bzzzz sound from Alastor. “I didn’t know you had a cell phone,” Angel noted.

“I don’t. That’s my pager,” he shrugged as he took his time retrieving it from his pocket. 

“I don’t know who is more of an antique, you or snake lord,” Angel snorted.

“Speaking of snake lord, it’s a message from him. He says his name and 313. Does that mean anything to you?”

“What? That’s his room number. It has to be him! Answer him!” Charlie cried, jumping out of her chair.

“I tried. I got a session disconnected message.”

.

“What… what just happened?” Zen asked, shaken up a bit. Just as their improvised view finder started to move on its own, there had suddenly been a loud crack. Both snakes had jumped back as the board snapped in half, a small trail of black smoke coming off of it.

“I… I don’t know. Could it be that this enclosure is preventing the signal from getting through?”

“Or our restraints interfered with the signal,” she suggested, noticing that some of the symbols were now glowing. “Hey, are you okay, you look kind of…”

“DAMN IT,” he suddenly snapped, slamming his hand against the rock ground hard enough to make Zen jump. None of his escape plans had worked, and he’d smashed the drone up so badly he doubted there was anything useful left in the pieces. “I’m… I’m sorry, Zen. I promised I’d get you out of here, but I can’t do that.” It was one thing when his plans for his own purposes didn’t work. It was another when he’d promised to save her, and he couldn’t…

“This is… this is just a setback, right?” she tried to encourage him. “You’ve got a genius intellect, right? I’m sure you’ll think of something else! And… and in the meantime, we’ve got each other! I mean, we can do anything as long as we’re not alone, right?” she said, snuggling up next to him. She was so soft, and she had a lovely deep scent to her.

A snake in the hand was worth two spiders in the bush, he thought. He might never get back to Hell. And… it wasn’t like they were dating, right? He just had a crush. So, it wasn’t like he would be cheating if… and, she was right. All they had was each other. Zen’s eyes got huge when he put his chin on top of her head. In snake language, that was the equivalent of “Want to go back to my place?” Wrapping their tails together was the equivalent of ripping their clothes off between the door and the bed. Now that he thought about it, did he even want to go back to Hell? Clearly no one where cared enough about him to try to find him.

He rolled on top of her, kissing her face and flicking his tongue against her breasts as she ran her clawed fingers through the hair on his hood. “I’ve never seen a hemipene in real life before, only on nature documentaries,” she informed him, her eyes trailing up and down his aroused members. “They’re not quite what I thought they would be.” Brilliant pink like his clawed fingers, with some yellow, and covered in soft spikey nubs. They looked more tickly than painful.

“Are you telling me that… you’re a virgin?”

“At least, as far as I can remember in this body. And I’m at least a forty-year virgin,” she pointed out. “I’m more than ready for this.”

While her previous Master had given her a television, she hadn’t exactly had the ability to order pay per view pornography, having to satisfy herself with nature documentaries. She had steeled herself for penetration with his cocks and was surprised when he explored around the edges of her cloaca with his fingers instead, as if questioning her entrance. “What… what are you doing?” she shuddered. 

“Making sure you are properly aroused so that I don’t hurt you,” he answered, his fingers sticky with the wetness growing inside her. He was playing with her insides, making the scales edging her opening wet and shiny. “Are you ready?” he asked, wrapping one of his hands around the left hemipene and pressing the head against her.

She arched her back to allow him deeper inside her cloaca, their bellies pressed tightly together as he fully penetrated her. She wasn’t quite as prepared for the intense thrusting. She dug her claws into his shoulders and held on tightly, whimpering with the pleasure of having her insides brushed up and down with those soft spikes.

She had never thought that watching someone pant, hair falling in their eyes, could be so arousing. She wanted him as deep inside her as he could push. If she moved her pelvis in rhythm with his, it felt like she was tingling with electricity from her cloaca up to her breasts and out her mouth as a breathy gasp. It was almost too much. She squirmed beneath him as though she wasn’t sure if she should try to break free. Not that she could. They were firmly locked, too deep into a forceful snake fuck to break apart. Every single stroke she would feel his full length go up and down inside her. She cried out, the length of her tail trembling. His tail tightened around hers, holding her still.

His hands were clasped around her wrists, pinning her arms above her head. Somehow, his grip felt tighter than the metal restraints. She couldn’t escape, impaled on his cock and restrained by the thickness of his weight on top of her. She couldn’t even cover herself, her body entirely exposed to his multitude of eyes.

A sensation like pure tingling of static electricity started at the very base of her cloaca, where the tip of his penis kept bumping against her. It spread outward like a firestorm of electricity, making her squeal. Her insides closed around his, squeezing tightly as they spasmed, and as if he response he released inside her. Nothing on a nature documentary could have prepared her for the sensation of her own orgasm or the force of his seed emptying into her.

They were screaming, sounding for all the world like true wild animals, their voices echoing through the enclosure. For a moment, all thoughts of escaping back to Hell were gone. All thoughts of their current situation, trapped in a magical enclosure, ceased to exist. The world consisted only of two snake demons, pleasuring one another. The nature documentaries Zen had watched told her that snake mating could last for hours, and she was hoping they were right. 

…

Meanwhile, in his logbook, the man who kept both snakes dispassionately wrote ‘First successful lock and copulation’ next to the date. ‘Stubborn male responded surprisingly well to drone with male king cobra pheromones on it. Too well, in fact. Need to buy new drone.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of course, 'Master' doesn't know demons are sterile. He doesn't even really know they're demons.


	6. Spider Bros Rescue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angel and Arackniss try to help Pentious escape. Once again, things don't go as planned.

“They’ve finally managed to back-trace the spirit board back to a specific building,” Charlie said, showing them an overhead view of a mansion. It was almost more of a complex than a single building in its sheer size. A massive wall surrounded the mansion at a respectable distance, and high-tech security systems were clearly visible on top of the wall. “But we can’t get a view inside the building because it’s got a protective barrier around it.”

“It would almost be a shame to get snake boy back, the hotel has never been cleaner,” Angel noted. Indeed, Niffty had put the eggs to work cleaning up their own mess, and then helping her with routine cleaning chores after. Giving them a leader and something to do seemed to keep them out of trouble. They were also still terrified of Arackniss.

“He’s been missing for just over a month now,” Charlie continued, wisely choosing to ignore Angel’s statement. “Demons can’t stay on the mortal plane for long, except under one of two circumstances. Option one, they voluntarily make a bargain either with a mortal or a powerful enough demon that allows them access to the mortal plane to complete a task. Given that he has only made one truncated attempt to contact us, that seems unlikely. More likely is the involuntary option. That’s where someone uses magic restraints to trap a demon on the mortal plane against its will. We don’t know what kind of condition he is in, given how long he’s been gone. We need volunteers to scout the situation out before we make any further moves. Alastor and myself are out because we have too much dark energy. We’d be noticed immediately by angels and cherubs if we went to the mortal plane without a contract, and they might ask uncomfortable questions.”

“Volunteers? By which you mean, you’re not going to pay us, right?” Angel asked coldly.

“Don’t you want to show you’ve become a better person?” Vaggie asked, arms crossed. “Volunteering for a selfless rescue mission?”

“You know, I haven’t been on the mortal plane in so long… it might actually be fun,” Angel said, suddenly changing his tune. Vaggie didn’t like that. That meant he was up to something.

“I’ll go with him,” Arackniss suddenly threw in, surprising Angel. He also knew that face, and knew Angel was up to something.

“Great! Now remember, this is only a reconnaissance mission. You’ll return here after you know the situation so we can decide what to do next. Now, for your disguises.”

“Disguises?” Angel asked.

“Alastor?” Charlie said, turning to him.

The next thing the two spiders knew, they had shrunk. They had become very, very tiny… and it took them a moment to realize they’d become literal spiders, held in the Radio Demon’s palm.

“What… what is this!” Angel asked, angrily squeaking as he waved his tiny spider arms.

“You’ll be able to get in and out without being noticed as spiders,” Charlie said brightly. “No one will suspect anything.”

.

“Being a real spider is hard work,” Angel huffed as the two climbed up the outside of the mansion. Charlie had only been able to teleport them to the bushes outside. It was up to them from there. “I feel like we’ve been walking forever, and we’ve gotten nowhere. Hey, bro, is this what it feels like to be short?”

Arackniss rolled all of his spider-eyes. “Come clean, why did you agree to help with this?”

“Because I think snake boy owing me a huge one would be hilarious, and I can hold it over Vaggie next time she says I don’t do anything worthy of ahem ahem redemption,” Angel answered. “Hey, can I shoot web?” he asked, firing a string that Arackniss had to dodge.

“I don’t want you touching me with anything that comes out of your butt,” his brother grunted. “I see a gap around the outside of this window. This might be our way in.”

“Why don’t you come clean with why you agreed to help with this?” Angel asked as they squirmed through the gap.

“To keep you out of trouble,” he answered shortly. After a crawl through the wall and hunting around a bit, they managed to find another crack and popped out inside what appeared to be a personal library.

“You sure there ain’t another reason?” Angel asked, before pausing to admire the décor. “Whoever owns this place sure has expensive tastes. You think they ever ready any of those fancy leather-bound books or do you think they’re just for show?”

“Eyes on the mission, Anthony.”

“I got enough eyes that I can spare a few. Now, let’s see. If I were keeping a giant hissy snake demon hidden in my house, where would I put it?”

“Not out in the open, I’d suspect. I think we need to search the upper floors.”

“This crawling across the ceiling thing is kind of fun,” Angel spoke up again as they headed for the door to the library. “Hey, do you think we can still do this when we go back to our normal demon bodies? Imagine Husker waking up to me doing this on _his_ ceiling!”

“That sounds like a good way to get yourself squished,” Arackniss answered. Being a tiny spider- well, far tinier than was usual even for him- was exhausting. The two spiders squeezed between the frame and the door itself, arriving in a dark hallway. They could hear two people talking down the hallway. They followed the sound of the voices to a kitchen. Two women were talking as they were slicing up two very delicious looking pizzas, with plenty of toppings, including a mass of melty white cheese. Angel felt his stomach rumble.

“I hate having to take food up to that room,” the younger-looking one said. “I always feel like I’m being watched.”

“Probably because the boss keeps so many of his slithery creepy crawlies up there,” the older woman shrugged. “I don’t like the way their black eyes follow me through the glass. They look like they’d attack me if they could.”

The women were loading the trays on a cart. Angel eyed the cart they were loading. That was their ticket to wherever the women were talking about, which sounded promising. “Quick, down the doorframe,” Angel urged as his brother followed him. As the cart passed through the door, the two spiders made a leap for it. As a jumping spider, Angel had no trouble reaching the second level of the cart and skittering inside to hide. His brother, however, almost missed it entirely, and just barely managed to get himself on top of the wheel wells without being crushed into spider paste.

They rode up in a tiny elevator that barely fit the younger of the two women and the cart together. They didn’t know how many floors they had gone up with the doors opened and the woman pushed the cart down a short hallway. She had to stop at a heavy wooden doorway, enter a code, and wait a few moments while a light above the door flashed before it clicked open. Arackniss noted multiple manual deadlocks on it besides the electronic lock, which immediately caught his attention. There was something in here someone wanted to protect.

Inside, three of the walls were covered in terrariums containing ordinary earth snakes. The spiders could see a few of them peering out or crawling on the glass, flicking their tongues. No wonder the woman always felt watched. There had to be at least a dozen of them.

The fourth wall looked into a room that looked like they’d gone to the zoo and were looking into a jungle exhibit. She walked up to a glass door set next to that wall and entered a second code. There was a sign above that door reading “NO STAFF PAST THIS POINT- DANGEROUS ANIMALS CONTAINED WITHIN.”

She pushed the cart, still carrying both spiders, into a space between two glass doors and stepped back. “Should we have jumped off?” Angel asked nervously as the door behind them swung shut with a click. After that door had been shut for a few moments, a light came on above the other door and it swung open. A mechanical lever arm extended to push the cart out into the jungle space, then retreated to allow the second door to swing shut as well.

“Interesting airlock system,” Angel noted as he skittered down the leg of the cart to where his brother clung on for dear life. “Now what? We’re stuck in here.”

“Do you hear that?” Arackniss asked. “It sounds like... what is that?”

As if to answer his question, what appeared to be a mechanical crab scuttled out of the brush. Using a pair of extendable arms, it reached up to grab the tray, and then delicately place the tray on its back. “Come on, we need to jump on that! It looks like something snake boy would have built!” Angel urged his brother. This time, though, he picked his brother up onto his back and made the leap for both of them. They hung onto the mechanical crab as it clattered through the foliage, nearly knocking the two spiders off several times.

They were unprepared for it to emerge into a small clearing where a green hammock was swaying slightly. Clipped up into one of the trees was a small fan, blowing a gentle breeze down in the direction of the hammock’s occupant. They could see a familiar thick, black and yellow tail dangling over the edge and just barely touching the ground. “We found him!” Angel whispered excitedly.

“Yeah, but he’s not alone,” Arackniss quickly noted, referring to the green and yellow tail entangled around the black tail. As if to emphasize his point, there was a long yawn and a voice they didn’t recognize spoke up.

“Lunch is here,” the new, unfamiliar voice yawned.

“I’d rather sleep, it is the perfect temperature here.” Despite having not heard it in a while, they both instantly recognized that second voice as belonging to Pentious.

“Come on, sleepy, upsy daisy,” the other green snake said as she sat up, trying not to rock the boat too hard.

“Whoa, I didn’t know snake demons had snitties,” Angel snorted. Arackniss looked away, not wanting to intrude on a woman’s privacy.

“Why is she naked?”

“Ah, I uh... hate to tell you this, but they’re both naked,” Angel answered. “She’s coming over here. Let me get her attention. Hey, hey! Snake lady! Hey!” Angel called, waving his spider arms.

In a cartoonishly stereotypical moment, Zen shrieked “EEEKS! SPIDERS!” and slammed her tail down hard on top of both of them. When she lifted it, there was a slight poofing sound, and both squished spiders returned to their full demon sizes... fortunately for them, still clothed, as they’d been transformed with their garments.

Zen immediately fled behind Pentious in terror. He could only stare, open-mouthed. “A... angel? And A... Arackniss????” he asked as the two spiders groaned and rubbed their aching heads. “Oh, my goodness. Please forgive Zen, if I had known you were coming, I would have warned her not to squash you!” Pentious said, helping Arackniss up. He just kind of ignored Angel. “What in the overworld are you doing here?!”

“We came to rescue you, dumbass,” Angel said, rubbing his head.

“Rescue me? Oh... oh, dear. It would appear there has been a slight miscommunication.”

“If you didn’t want to be rescued, why did you send that weird message to Alastor?” Angel inquired.

“My... my message got through? And I suppose at the time I did want to be rescued, but the situation has somewhat changed since then. To say the least,” Pentious mused. “Why don’t you stay for lunch? Master always has too much food prepared for just two snakes,” Zen added in. She felt kind of bad she’d slammed them, but they made her nervous enough that she continued to hide behind Pentious.

“Master?” Angel asked. His eyes narrowed when he spotted the shackles around their wrists. “Hang on, you two are slaves, and yet you’re telling me you don’t want to be rescued?”

“That’s not... that’s not entirely the circumstance,” Pentious responded. He released a huffing sigh. “The chains are what allow us to stay on the mortal plane. If we took them off, we’d be immediately sent back to Hell. Perhaps I could explain everything while we eat?”

“It sure sounds like you have a lot of explaining to do,” Angel snorted.


	7. Love spelled backwards is evol

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pentious explains things to Arackniss and Angel. But will the rescuers become the ones who need to be rescued?

Previously

.

“There’s something new in our home,” Zen said nervously. Her hood was tense, as she wasn’t sure if she should raise it or not. Yawning, Pentious crawled out of the pile of leaves he’d been resting in and followed her. He kept shaking his head as he stretched out the length of his tail, trying to wake himself fully as he followed her. He’d only known her for a few days, but one thing that was clear was that she was nervous to the point of almost being neurotic. Sometimes she got so nervous she made him second-hand jittery.

He tilted his head to the side. It appeared to be a pile of parts and tools. He poked suspiciously at it. Why would anyone give him tools? Unless they were that confident that he couldn’t escape. Well, they certainly underestimated his intelligence, he thought as he picked through the pile. He’d been sorting through the pile of drone parts and trying to do something with it ever since he brought it down, but how would they know that unless… unless there was a camera in the nest.

A shiver went up his spine. He didn’t have time to think long about the possibility before Zen was in his face again. “What are these?” she asked.

“They appear to be… laminated pictures of food?” he asked. “Are they taunting us with things they won’t let us eat?” He was starving. There hadn’t been anything since the pig. He hadn’t exactly enjoyed the pig, and he was used to eating daily. He missed coffee and tea most of all. Having nothing but the small waterfall above the little pool to drink from depressed him. Without another animal, he couldn’t even try making another spirit board.

“There’s a slot in the wall,” Zen pointed. “Was that there before?” Pentious’ immediate first thought was to see if there was any way he could pry the housing of the slot out of the wall to make an opening. He couldn’t even get his fingers into it. It looked like it was only wide enough for a few pieces of paper. He even tried seeing if he could get the tip of his tail into it.

He frowned, deep in thought for a moment, before he went and picked a randomly chosen picture up and dropped it into the slot. A light above it flashed, momentarily startling both himself and Zen. He hadn’t noticed the light inset before it went off. He tried to look down into the slot, but all he could see was blackness.

As his head was practically pressed against the glass, he realized he could see through it just enough to see a shape moving on the other side. He immediately pulled back again with a startled hiss. “Sir?” Zen asked. For some reason, she insisted on calling him “Sir” instead of “Pen” or “Pent” like he was used to from the others back home. Home. He felt a little pang in his heart.

He quickly slithered over to Zen, nudging her with his head. “There’s someone on the other side. Let’s go.” The two quickly retreated towards the back of the enclosure, where the pool was. He’d been working on attempting to weave a hammock-like structure out of vines he’d been pulling off trees. He only knew how to do a basic basket weave. He needed to find something sticky, like sap, that he could use to hold the vines together. Still, he wasn’t exactly happy about having to go around sticking either his hands or tail into random things to test if they were sticky.

“You’re upset,” Zen said quietly.

“I’m not going to be on display like his trained pet,” Pentious hissed as he crawled into the pool. Being there made him feel safe. It was where he had started to go when he needed to think or otherwise get away from things. “I miss Hell, and the fact that I’m hungry and he’s teasing us with pictures of food we can’t have just makes me angrier. I miss my bed I want to… I want to go home,” he said, his voice breaking. “I even miss the rest of those idiots at the hotel!”

Zen was quiet for a bit. “But… do they miss you?” she asked, following him into the hot water bath.

“What do you mean?” he asked, his voice on the edge of snapping at her.

“I… I just mean, you’ve been here for several days now, right? And none of them have attempted to come rescue us? If they were friends, they would have tried to rescue you by now, right?” she asked, resting her head against his sternum, next to the prominent eye. She was drawing the tip of one claw down his chest, making him shudder slightly.

“There’s no way they could possibly know where I am,” he responded, sinking deeper into the water. “I haven’t even been able to find an alternative ink to make another spirit board. I don’t… I’m out of ideas,” he sighed. This was the first time in his life he’d ever come to a dead end like this. He could almost always see a way out of any situation he got himself into. Now, his mind was uncharacteristically blank. Perhaps because it was hard to concentrate with Zen rubbing her surprisingly smooth scales up against him. They were having intense sex several times a day, which didn’t help his hunger.

“Are you sure they care about you? Sorry. I… I’m not trying to be mean! I just… I care about you, and I hate to see you sad over someone who might not even know you’re gone,” she said slowly, cupping his face in her hands.

“Of course, they care! Well… the princess… cares…” he said slowly, his voice drifting off. As hot as Angel’s brother was, Angel hated him. So did Angel’s best friend Cherri, who hung out often enough that she might as well just move into the hotel. Of course, if she hadn’t burned down his house, he might not have moved into the hotel in the first place, but… that was neither here nor there. Husk didn’t even notice he was alive. Niffty was kind and sweet, but he doubted she had the resources to rescue him. He and Baxter fought constantly, in a battle of tall inventor versus short chemist. Baxter would be happy to see the tail end of him. Alastor couldn’t remember his name no matter how many times he stated it. He was pretty sure Alastor was only pretending to not remember to annoy the shit out of him. Vaggie was strict and tense, and while she didn’t usually get on his case because she was too busy chasing Alastor and Angel, their interactions hadn’t exactly been favorable.

In short, while he could be certain that the princess would try to rescue him if she could… he couldn’t count on any of the others. They’d either not even notice or be outright glad he was gone. As much as he loved the idea of Arackniss bursting through that wall, guns blazing in all four arms, and carrying him away into the sunset… did Arackniss even know he was alive? He was too shy about his feelings and had only been able to peek at him occasionally when he came to visit his brother Angel. If anything, Arackniss probably thought he was a weird creeper or maybe even a stalker.

He shook his head violently, almost accidentally pushing Zen into the water. She squeaked in surprise, and he apologized, saying he’d just gotten too lost in his thoughts. As he settled back in, he thought about the Egg Bois and Hat. They’d miss him, right? Not like they could rescue him, but they’d at least miss him, wouldn’t they? Although… maybe they wouldn’t. He knew Hat had other owners before him. As for the Egg Bois? While he had built them to be loyal to him, he wasn’t sure what would happen if he disappeared since it hadn’t happened before. As far as he knew, they’d latch onto a new leader easily. If he could look into Hell, would they be weeping for him, or throwing a party that they were free of him? There was a pain in his chest. He closed his fist over his chest. He wasn’t sure if he was homesick… or heartbroken.

It was only then that he noticed the symbols on his wrist chains were lightly glowing. “What are they doing?” he asked, showing them to Zen.

.

“We noticed,” Arackniss suddenly broke through his mental fog as he recounted the story. “The princess, Angel, Baxter, myself… we were all trying to find you. We blanketed Hell in missing posters.”

“The Egg Bois did throw a party though,” Angel cut in. “Made a mess of the place. Bro here read them the riot act and then Niffty whipped them into shape. Pun, intended. Also, did you really have this mental image of my brother busting the place up, or did you make that up on the fly just to blow smoke up our asses?”

Pentious responded to that by looking down at the ground and drawing a finger through the dirt and loose tree bark. Arackniss gave his brother a glare, intending to signal that he wasn’t helping the situation. “You’re wrong about everyone wanting you to disappear. The princess hasn’t been sleeping well since you went missing. So… why don’t you come back to Hell? We’ll figure out a way to get those chains off and then…”

“Mister Arackniss, please do not take this as rude, but I have already established to you that I do not need to be rescued and I do not wish to return to Hell.”

“But you just said everything was shit here, so why?” Angel asked, still confused. This was damn good pizza. Like, fuck. You couldn’t get a pizza like this in Hell. But Pentious couldn’t want to stay on Earth just for a pizza, could he?

The snake took a deep breath, puffing up his lungs. “I need to finish my story.”

.

.

As Pentious showed his glowing wrist cuffs to Zen, she looked at them quizzically. “I don’t know. Mine don’t usually light up,” she answered. “Do they hurt? Are they hot? Do you want me to rub your wrists?”

“You’re the one who cares about me,” he responded, giving her a kiss in the form of a flick of his tongue on her hood. His voice sounded more hollow than usual, distant from his disturbing thoughts. The idea that only Zen mattered had suddenly planted himself in his mind, and he couldn’t push it away. Was this… was this what love felt like?

The next part of the story, Pentious would omit from telling the two spiders. It was none of their business. Zen slithered up on top of him, pressing the scales of their bellies together. While this smothered his poor chest-eye in her breasts, it was a nice enough view that a little sacrifice could be made for the cause. They were kissing, and since two snakes have a lot of incredibly flexible tongue, you can imagine how that was going for them.

Positioning herself over him, she lowered herself into the water until she could feel the edge of his cock pressing against her opening. She gripped his shoulders tightly as his claws dug into her back. He filled the inside of her completely, making her cry out as they slid against one another beneath the surface of the water. The way she was arching her back, she was almost smothering him in her breasts. Not that he minded. Wouldn’t be the worst way to go. “Fill me with your seed, I want to bear your eggs!” she whined. In any context other than the throes of passion, it would have sounded comical.

There was thrusting and screaming amidst the splashing of water before she climaxed, making her body writhe so violently that he had to hold her down to prevent them from separating before he reached his own climax. Panting breaths slid from their mouths as they let the warmth of the water wash over them. She slipped her head under his chin, wanting to be nuzzled.

.

The snakes turned their heads in unison when they heard the sound of a door opening. Pentious’ hood went up and he took off immediately, desperate to catch that door open. If he could just get his tail in the gap, he was sure he had enough strength to force it.

He ground to a halt, scales skidding across the dirt, when he reached the viewing area and found a silver-colored metal cart resting next to the door. Of course, he’d already made numerous attempts to break the door itself, and all had failed as it was as strong as, if not stronger than, the viewing window. He moved very cautiously, making several loops around the cart with his tongue flicking. His stomach was practically screaming at him that he smelled food, but the part of his brain that was more cautious than his hunger was still in charge.

“What is it?” Zen asked.

He finally lifted the cover on the tray sitting on the cart with the very end of his tail, jumping back once he flipped it off in case there was a trap underneath. There wasn’t. He poked it with a long, clawed finger. He picked up a piece and tasted it, just to be sure he was really seeing what he thought he was. “It’s... sushi? Raw fish on rice, that is. You haven’t seen sushi before?” he answered in confusion. “Why are they giving us sushi?” Not that he minded! While he wasn’t the hugest fan of it, it was certainly better than pig that was so raw it was still oinking. It was something he could eat without having to fight the urge to vomit the entire time, and he was painfully hungry.

"The picture you stuck in the slot this morning was a picture of a fish,” Zen pointed out.

He picked one of the remaining laminated pictures out of the dirt. Selecting one that showed a cup with steam coming off of it, he pushed that through the slot, watching the light flash again. He then turned his attention back to the first real meal he’d had since leaving Hell. Zen just watched in bemusement as he devoured the entire tray in mere minutes. He wished he’d slowed down a bit as, confirming his theory, a second tray arrived carrying tea. It would have been nice to have that with his lunch.

“I don’t understand.” What made them switch from feeding the snakes raw pigs completely unprepared to... well, it is still raw fish, but prepared in a more aesthetically pleasing manner?

“Humans are confusing,” Zen shrugged. “You feeling better?”

“Now that I’ve been given proper food worthy of someone of my status, instead of pet food... I feel better, yes.”

A light switch was flicked on the other side of the glass, and suddenly, they could see the man who had been keeping them. He looked to be in his late thirties or early forties. His hair had started to grey but still maintained a significant amount of color. He had a short, well-trimmed beard that was mixed grey and brown like his hair. He was wearing a suit that was well-fitted enough to belay that it had likely been expensive. His hood went up and he hissed at the viewing wall as he slithered backwards to get away from the wall.

Pentious was torn between fleeing and wanting to stand up to the stranger. He ultimately swallowed his initial instinct to run and brought himself up as high on his tail as he could, staring back at the man. Their eyes met. The man simply smiled broadly at him, not showing a hint of fear. This frustrated him. How could the man not be pissing himself at the mere sight of such a terrifying demon as himself?

The man just continued to smile at them in a creepy way until they both decided it would be in their interest to leave the viewing area, unnerved by his smile. If Alastor’s smile was an 8 out of 10 on the creepy scale, this man was pushing 11.

.

“That’s the essence of it,” Pentious finished. “We’ve been given everything we want since that day. They’ve even started putting magazines with our food, and if we rip out pictures and push them through, sometimes we get what we asked for,” Pentious continued, shaking the hammock to indicate that was how they had come into possession of it. “We are being fed like royalty. Almost everything we ask for is granted. I’m being allowed to spend my time just… building whatever I want, instead of having to dedicate my time to making weapons. I haven’t been able to be so creative in decades! No one is trying to blow me up, or otherwise hurt me. And it’s so… so quiet here. It’s so quiet I can hear my own thoughts clearly for the first time since I died.”

“What about your ambitions to become an Overlord?” Angel asked.

“I suppose even if I’d made it to Overlord, I would still be ruled over by Lucifer. I’m not seeing how that would be different from how things are now. I am Overlord of this enclosure.”

“Overlord of a tiny prison where you’re being held as a pet to a human master,” Arackniss interjected, which clearly irritated both snakes, judging from the way their hoods twitched slightly.

“This. Is. Heaven,” he said, sharply punctuating each word. “Isn’t that what we wanted? What the princess wanted? For us to get to Heaven?”

“To real Heaven, not this comfortable fake,” Angel shot back, pointing the fingers of his two left hands directly in the snake’s face. “Mister Sir Pentious, listen to yourself. Your voice is dull, and your eyes are empty. This isn’t you. You’re being manipulated and controlled. Even look at yourself! You were always such a prude, and now you want me to believe you’ve found true happiness as a nudist? Mister Prim and Proper himself wanting to become a wild animal? Let an expert on broken hearts tell you, this isn’t love. This is Stockholm syndrome at best. You need to snap out of it!”

“How… how fucking dare you!?” Zen hissed, pushing Pentious aside as she got directly into Angel’s face.

“Sorry, toots, but I’m telling it as I see it. And as for you… you… you…” Angel started to wobble a bit on his feet. 

“Anthony?” Arackniss asked. His head suddenly hurt as well, causing him to grip onto a tree to support himself. His stomach was flipping. Blackness was slipping around the edges of his vision like Alastor’s tentacles.

“… Angel? Arackniss?” Pentious asked in concern, moving towards them. “What is happening to you?” Zen grabbed him and pulled him back.

“They’re just jealous of us. You know they’d make the same decision if they were in our place.”

“Zen, stop this. Something is very wrong! We should…” suddenly Pentious was wobbling as well. “I… I don’t feel so great, myself,” he said, slowly slinking down. Whatever was affecting them, it took him out faster than it hit the spiders. He was completely unconscious on the ground in moments.

The world was spinning inside Angel’s vision. “We’ve been drugged,” Angel said groggily. He knew that feeling well.

“Yes, while you two were distracted, I injected enough of my sleep venom into the pizza to ensure that,” Zen hissed. The two groggy spiders looked at her, the realization of horror spreading through their chests. The wide-eyed, grinning look her face was that of a crazed woman. “Took it a bit to kick in. I wasn’t sure it would work on my darling, and I really didn’t want to poison him, but a woman does what she has to for her man. I’m not letting you take him from me. You’re not getting to burst in here like a great hero and carry him away, you damned spiders,” she snarled. “He’s mine! My love!” she said desperately. “And I’m… I’m going to carry his child!” 

As they were sinking down the ground, they could hear a clicking sound as a group of humans in full biohazard outfits entered the enclosure. The last thing either spider was conscious of, they were watching Zen carry an unconscious Pentious away while the humans approached them.


	8. The "great" escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will our crew escape? Or will Pentious have to add another failed plan to his list?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Threats of sexual violence

Zen slithered back and forth, watching over a sleeping Pentious. She’d told herself that when he woke up, she’d tell him he’d only dreamed about the spiders… but something still felt wrong to her. Was this… was this feeling _guilt_? She slapped herself hard on both cheeks. Half of her was screaming that if she let him go with them, she’d be alone again. She’d be back to a prisoner in almost solitary confinement, with only a television and the occasional visits of a human Master that she had to cower before. The other half was telling her that keeping him there with her for selfish reasons was wrong. Maybe even a little bit was starting to think that escaping back to Hell with him was the right decision.

No. She couldn’t remember Hell, but she knew it had to be terrible. It was Hell, right? She wasn’t going to go back there to find out. She needed some air. She slid out of the nest, wandering aimlessly through the enclosure.

.

“Are you awake?” the man asked the groaning spiders. They were tied back-to-back in two chairs, ropes around their combined eight arms at the wrists. “Don’t try to struggle, those are magically protected anti-demon restraints. Do you think I got this rich without knowing how to make a few deals with devils?” the man asked, pouring himself a drink.

“You better let us and the snakes go,” Angel argued, his words still a little slurred. He was blinking hard to fight off the last of the sleep. “

“Do you think I’m afraid of you?” he asked. “This entire house is warded. I’m not sure how you two slipped through the wards and got inside, but you’ve shown me that I’m going to need to up my security. Now, as for what I’m going to do with you two… I know how hard demons are to destroy, and I imagine if I sent you back to Hell, you’d just return to try again. So, shall I ask, what would you do in my position?”

“I’d let us go before I get my ass kicked,” Angel answered.

The man let out a hearty laugh, genuinely amused. “I’ve called the man who provided your snake friend to me, and he’s on his way to pick you two up. I’m sure he’ll find buyers for you both. He might even be able to sell you as a pair for a discount.”

“You just wait until the princess finds out about this! She’s gonna kick your fake-tan ass” Angel snapped, squirming in his chair.

“Please, tell me what she could do to me. The chains on those demons count as a contract, and no one can break a demonic contract. Not even Hell’s royalty. As long as I have these,” he said, patting the two keys on a gold chain around his neck, “Those two are legally _mine_ as the laws of Hell declare.”

“What is the deal with you and the snakes anyway?” Arackniss asked. He knew expositions and monologues were a villain’s weak spot. “What do you want with them?”

“Yeah, this some kind of kink of yours?” Angel asked. Arackniss scrunched up his face in annoyance, as his brother was not helping.

“The only man who can rival me in the world of collecting snakes recently obtained two albino king cobras and a two-headed rattlesnake. I had to go the next step above to beat him. One of my dear friends happened to ask me if I’d like to buy the extremely rare snake she’d inherited from her mother… and from the day I saw that female, I knew I’d have to have a breeding pair to beat my rival.”

“You realize demons can’t have kids, right?” Angel asked him.

“Correct, but snake demons can still produce non-viable eggs. And let me just say, there is a certain… market among those who practice magic for the eggs of demons, especially demons that reproduce more rarely than the avian types.”

“You’re planning on making them make eggs for you to _sell_?”

“I have spent over a million dollars on obtaining the two of them and their enclosure. I’m sure that helps you see why I’m not letting two ratty spiders take them away from me. Should I not be able to make some of that back? I don’t see why you two are so determined to take them back to Hell. Look at what they have. Isn’t this a better place for them? They have everything they could ever want.”

“Except their freedom,” Angel responded. He knew all too well what that felt like, due to the nature of his contract with Valentino.

“They don’t need it. I’ll take good care of them, and they’ll be happy without it. And if they aren’t, I can always make them happy. Like I encouraged little Zen to poison you. Oh, she already had the thought in her head. I just made her act on it.”

.

He didn’t realize that he’d left the speakers on, and due to her confused crawl-about, Zen had heard everything. Her eggs… her eggs weren’t viable? She could never have a baby? And worse, this man knew that and had been planning on taking her eggs? Leaving her to think he’d taken her babies?

She was furious as she fled back to the nest. Pentious was just starting to wake up, rubbing his own aching head. “Oh, Zen, I wondered where you were. I had the strangest dream. I dreamed that Arackniss and Angel were…”

She grabbed his arms tightly in her claws, startling him fully awake. “Zen? You’re crying! And you’re hurting me.”

She suddenly scooped up a bunch of dead leaves and crammed them into the hold where she’d figured out the camera was. She’d noticed the glint of the lens a few times. “It wasn’t a dream! It wasn’t a dream. Master… Master has them prisoner in his viewing room, and he’s planning on selling them like we were sold,” she whispered, puling him close in hopes that the microphone wouldn’t pick up her audio. “This is my fault. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Pentious’ eyes got huge. “Well… I certainly enjoyed my time living here, and I’m sad it has to come to an end, but we can’t let anything happen to Niss! And okay, maybe we’ll also save Angel. Just because the princess would be mad if we didn’t.”

“How? What can we do?”

“Activate,” he said. He reached out and tapped a code with the tips of his clawed fingers onto the head of one of the robots he’d built. The eyes lit up, and suddenly all of his mobile inventions were converging outside the nest. They were crawling over one another, pieces snapping together as they entangled their bodies. “Got the idea from a superhero movie, of all things. If I’d outright built this, our captor would have shut me down. But by making it in a bunch of tiny little pieces… I’m sorry I lied to Mister Arackniss and Angel, but I guess I had been building weapons this entire time. To be fair, letting me have access to a full workshop was a stupid move on that man’s part.”

When the small machines had all clicked together, it had turned itself into a giant mechanical spider with a semi-protected area around the steering controls. “Come on, Zen. Hold on tightly. It is time to, as the kids used to say, blow this popsicle stand.”

.

To say that the man who called himself ‘Master’ was unprepared for a large mechanical spider carrying two snake demons to smash through his viewing window was an understatement. He’d been so distracted continuing to brag about himself, his plans, and his snake collection to the spiders that he hadn’t been watching the enclosure security cameras. The scream he made as they came through the window was incoherent.

At that moment, Arackniss saw his opening. He slammed his skull into the man’s middle so hard you could hear his ribs cracking. As the man staggered forwards in agony, clutching his belly, Angel reached out with one of his extra retractable arms and grabbed the keys, snapping the gold chain easily with his strength. “Should have tied up all our arms, loser! PENTIOUS! You better catch this, you damn worm!” he shouted, throwing the keys across the room.

Of course, Pentious missed. He wasn’t an athlete by any means. Luckily, Zen caught them. “Don’t let go of those keys, Zen!” Arackniss shouted. He and Angel used their extra arms to slide out of the ropes, which had only been holding their normally visible arms.

The man staggered over to the wall and slammed is hand against a big red button. Alarms started sounding and a heavy metal panel dropped over the window. “We have to find another way out of here,” Angel shouted as they ran, Pentious’ spider making kindling out of the wood door. “Crazy dude let it spill that we won’t be able to open a portal inside!”

“You mean, we need to find a way out that won’t be covered by his panic security,” Pentious answered. “My spider was designed to hit the pressure points of the viewing window and shatter it, but I doubt it could break through a wall or a metal plate.”

“There’s got to be a weak point!” Arackniss shouted as they slid around a corner, sending terrified maids screaming and fleeing. Two men in hazmat suits emerged from a side corner, running as best they could in their bulky garb, but were easily taken down by spider-strength punches to the jaw.

“Like maybe THAT?” Angel asked, pointing to a large greenroom conservatory. The metal plates had come up to cover the walls, but there was still an opening on the ceiling.

“That will absolutely do!” Pentious answered. “As long as this has enough jumping power to reach it…”

It just barely did. They got through the glass and went sliding down the outside of the greenhouse, Pentious and Zen screaming as he tried to control the fall of his machine. He couldn’t recover, and it smashed into pieces on the lawn, sending the two snakes flying.

“How are we going to get up there?” Arackniss asked. Angel suddenly grabbed him under both arms.

“YEET, BRO!” he shouted, tossing poor Arackniss up and out through the opening. He could hear his brother shouting ow-ow-ow-ow as he rolled down the outside of the building. A moment later, Angel used his jumping abilities to get himself out, sliding down the slick outer walls.

“Zen, Arackniss, are you two both okay?” Pentious asked in alarm as he assisted them both up. “Oh, my poor machine…”

“Never mind if I’m okay, does she still have the keys?”

“Yes!” she answered. “I’ve got them safe. We’re outside, now what?”

“We use the signal device to tell the Princess we need an evac, fast!” Arackniss said, pulling it out of his pocket. He’d been entrusted with it mere moments before they’d been turned into actual spiders by Alastor. He pushed down on the button and it lit up, along with the word ‘connecting your request.’

“Come on, come on…” the metal panels were starting to come back up again. The group took off running and crawling across the yard. “Open the portal, open the…”

There was a loud booming sound like thunder. “Zen, Arackniss, look out!” Pentious shouted, getting himself between them and the incoming object. It hit him hard, throwing him back into the other three as a net expanded, spreading over them.

Still staggering slightly, the man emerged from inside the house. “You… you fucking spider… I’m going to rip off each of your damned limbs before I sell you!” He looked down at the captive group, trying to regain his composure. “Zen. And… Pentious, was it? I’m disappointed. I gave you two everything you ever wanted, and this is how you pay me back?!”

“You were going to take our babies!”

“The babies you can’t have? Your empty, childless eggs?” he asked. Zen’s expression looked as crushed as an egg that had been thrown under a bus. She had been hoping it wasn’t true. “Ah, I knew I should have mind wiped you both back to reset when I got you, but I was stupid and thought you’d be reasonable. But don’t worry. All of this can be forgiven. Just surrender easily and I won’t punish you too hard. I’ll even let you forget that all of this happened, so you can be happy again. You were happy, weren’t you?”

“Zen, don’t give him the keys,” Pentious said, grabbing her arm.

“I don’t think she can stop me,” he laughed. “Seeing as how you’re under a net and all. I can just reach down and take them.”

“No, you can’t. I swallowed them!” Zen said proudly.

“You… well, you’re more of a little bitch than I thought you were. That’s fine. When my friend arrives, he can make a new set of keys for me. Then I’ll have my vet remove the old keys from you by surgery… without anesthetic,” he growled. “Maybe after that, I’ll even have a turn to see what fucking you is like.”

Pentious hissed back at him, but there was nothing else he could do. The magic net had them immobilized. “Ah, here comes my friend’s truck,” he said. He took a set of keys out of his pocket and pressed the fob, causing the gates to slide open. “Let’s just face it. I’ve won, and you’ve lost.”

He strode proudly over the small box truck as it pulled into his driveway. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to get you to make another set of keys for me, as there’s been an accident with…” He stopped, frozen in place, cut off mid-sentence. What was sitting in the driver’s seat was a blow-up doll. Before he could take another step either forwards or backwards, a single gunshot rang out, and the man fell to the ground. Or rather, what was left of him fell to the ground. There wasn’t much of a head left.

The four trapped demons could only stare in confusion as the doors of the truck swung open and small figures emerged from within. “Imps…” Arackniss hissed under his breath.


	9. Where do we go from here?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone's home again, but the drama isn't over yet. Zen and Arackniss both have things they need to confess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your friendly neighborhood author has been in a bad headspace lately and has been lacking motivation to write because of it. I wish I could get my motivation back. Sigh. (Feels like sad fishing in here yo)

The tallest of the imps approached them, still smoking gun slung over his shoulder. “So, which one of you two snake ladies is Zen? Is it washboard or watermelons?”

“Excuse me?!” Pentious hissed. “Don’t you recognize me, you malformed horny tomato?”

“Oh! Hey, Penny! What you doing here?! Long time no see! You still a raging dickbag?” Pentious made an annoyed hiss in response to Blitzo’s causal response.

“For the love of Lucifer, please don’t tell me this is another of your ex’s,” Moxxie sighed, rubbing his face in the palm of his left hand.

Blitzo ignored him. “Look, we don’t normally do fetch missions, but since the client was buying two murders we threw in the service as a bonus. We’re gonna need the lady snake to come with us.”

“That works fine for us,” Arackniss said as Millie and Moxxie pulled back the net. “Pent can come with us, Zen can go with you, and all this nonsense will be over.”

“Except she swallowed the keys to the chains,” Angel pointed out.

“Oh. Snakes can regurgitate at will,” Zen said slowly. With a loud hacking sound, she demonstrated this by spitting out the keys.

Arackniss gave a disgusted look with a twitching eyebrow. Angel said, “Wow, that’s a skill I could use.”

Pentious noticed the way Zen wouldn’t make eye contact and let out a deep, heavy breath, his shoulders rolling forward. “I’ll go with Zen just until I know she’s safe. I promised her that I would,” he suddenly spoke up. “Also, if we remove the chains in the Overworld, that might shoot us to a random part of Hell, and neither of us want that. I’ll catch a taxi and come back to the hotel immediately afterwards, okay?”

The smaller spider looked them both over for a moment before giving one head shake and removing his coat and handing it over to Pentious, before fishing out twenty dollars and handing it over to the snake as well. “You’d better get back to the hotel as fast as you can, I like that coat.”

Angel, feeling guilty that his brother was being so kind to Pentious, shrugged off his coat and offered it with extended fingers and a displeased face to Zen. “Here, wouldn’t be fair to send a lady back to Hell naked,” he snorted. “I want my coat back quickly, too.”

“Don’t worry about me, I can handle Blitzo if I need to,” Pentious smiled, waving at the spiders as he went off with the imps.

“Oh, is _that_ what you call it you two-dicked limp noodle?” Blitzo argued back as they headed for their own portal. “And the o is silent now!”

“Now you listen here, you fake-cinnamon flavored tart…” Pentious shot back. They didn’t hear the rest, as they’d disappeared behind the portal.

“For someone who constantly talks about how evil he is, he has a strangely big heart,” Arackniss noted.

“Is that why you like him?”

“I… didn’t say that. I think that kind of compassion in Hell is rare, that’s all!” Arackniss argued back as their own portal finally opened. “It’s worthy of admiration.”

“You totally got a crush.”

“Anthony, I will crush _you_ if you keep it up!”

.

The two spiders were waiting at the hotel, glancing at the clock with an ever-increasing frequency as time went on. “It’s been too long,” Arackniss finally spoke up. “He said he’d come back as soon as possible. I knew we couldn’t trust those imps. We should go to Imp City and…”

Right as the spider was getting antsy, the door creaked slowly open and Pentious slithered in. They would have expected him to look happy to be home. Instead, he looked upset. Just as Charlie was about to ask him what was wrong, Zen entered behind him, her eyes cast down on the ground.

“What is she doing here?!” Angel asked, pointing at her with four fingers.

“Wait, wait, please! Don’t fight! She didn’t have anywhere else to go!” Pentious jumped in. You could hear the layers of stress in his voice.

“What happened with the imps? And the client who wanted to see her so badly?” Arackniss asked, also hoping to defuse the situation.

The female snake responded to the question by shrinking further into her coils, which made Pentious grip her shoulders. “I’m going to take Zen up to my room and let her rest and then I’ll come back and explain. If that’s okay with you, that is, Zen.”

“That’s fine. Tell them everything,” she said with a sniff. Only then did they realize her black eyes were just barely holding back the tears. 

“Stay right here, we’ll call the client and tell her we’ve got you,” Blitzo informed them, leaving the two snakes at their conference table.

“I suppose we should deal with these,” Zen sighed, unlocking the chains on Pentious. He rubbed his wrists. He had a sensation like he’d been hit by a breaking rubber band when the lock opened.

“Do you want me to do yours?”

“No, I’ll take care of myself…” she said slowly, unlocking her own chains.

“I should take these back to the princess to have these properly destroyed,” he said, picking up the chains from the table and sticking them in his pocket. Mainly, he didn’t want Blitzo to get them.

“Yeah, I… aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” she screamed suddenly, doubling over, holding her head between her hands.

“Zen? Zen?” he asked, grabbing her shoulders.

“My… my memory came back… I… I… I killed them! I…” she became very quiet. “I remember why I went to Hell now. I went to a party.” Her voice was tiny and stretched. “I was drinking. I was underage. I agreed to drive three of my friends home. I killed all three of them and the two men in the opposing car. I… my friends and I, we all arrived in Hell together, and when they realized that I’d been responsible for killing them… they turned on me… Started screaming that it all my fault. They were right. I killed us all.” She finally managed to straighten herself up and put her hands on the table, her body shaking.

As Pentious was trying to calm her, the door opened. A tall demon walked in. This demon looked like a skeleton with some tightly stretched dry skin over it. The lips were pulled back, revealing all the dry and rotted teeth. Barely any dry, straw-like hair clung to her head. She looked down at the two snakes coldly, her eyes just holes with pinpoints of light in them. “Zen… Sheila,” she said slowly.

“Master. Or should I say… mother?” she asked coldly. Pentious looked between them both, his face completely clouded with confusion.

She took a seat. “I couldn’t stand losing you.”

“I’M GUILTY OF MURDER! And you… you put me in prison because of it.”” she screamed, and Pentious had to hold her back. She was trying to jump over the table, claws out and hood open. 

“By the time I got the magic necessary to bring you back from Hell, you looked like… that. What could I do? I couldn’t let you out in society like that, and I couldn’t return you to Hell.”

“So, you put me in solitary confinement. And when you died, my… my own sister… my own sister…”

“I know. Who do you think the second person I had killed was?” she replied coldly, and Zen froze up, tears stuck on her scales.

“…. Madame,” Pentious finally spoke up, lifting Zen up out of her chair and onto her scales. “We’re leaving. Please don’t come after us. I don’t want to have to hurt you, but I will if you follow us.

“You can’t take my daughter away from me,” she snarled, getting up herself. Well, now he could see where Zen got it from.

“Madame, I may not have been the best of fathers when I was alive, but I was nowhere near your level of awful.”

“Then as a parent, you should understand what it’s like to have your child ripped from you.”

This did give him a moment of hesitation. Finally, he responded. “She needs some time. Come to the Happy Hotel in three days. She’ll tell you then if she wants to have anything to do with you. Zen… let’s go talk to the princess,” he said, wrapping his arm around her still shaking body and guiding her towards the door.

“Don’t you walk out on me, you little slug! You…”

He quickly snapped his head around and flared his hood, freezing her in place with his hypnotism. “I told you I don’t want to hurt you, but I can if I have to.”

.

“So, her mom…”

“Ordered the hit not only on the man who was keeping us prisoner, but on her own daughter and Zen’s sister, yes.”

“And I thought our family was fucked up,” Angel said to Arackniss. They’d both gotten their coats back now, but that seemed insignificant in light of what Pentious was telling them.

“I couldn’t just leave her alone with her demon of a mother, with those words intended as an insult. Princess, she feels extremely regretful for what she did in life. Isn’t… doesn’t that make her a prime candidate for redemption?” he asked, almost pleading.

“That’s up to her,” Charlie said. “If she wants to seek redemption, we’ll welcome her. Regardless of what may have happened between you and her on the mortal plane.”

“We’re still sorting that up. How much of our actions were our own choices and what we were mind controlled into doing is… unclear to both of us. I have established that she is excessively fearful of being on her own, which given her history, I can’t really blame her for. I doubt I would have gotten her to rest if she hadn’t been enamored with the Egg Bois and willing to let them join her. Speaking of which, I should go back and check on her. I just wanted to establish her situation with all of you. I hope you’ll be discrete and respectful with this information,” Pentious finished, giving Angel a sharp look.

“What?” Angel asked.

As he was heading back up the stairs, he heard a very light foot fall behind him. He whirled around, expected to find Husk from how soft it was, only to find Arackniss instead. “Oh, um… Mister Arackniss. What can I do for you? I hope I didn’t damage your garments while I was borrowing them! I will pay for any dry-cleaning costs if I have…”

“Did you really imagine that I’d come bursting in with all my guns blazing to rescue you? Or were you making that up on the spot just to be nice?” he asked.

The snake flushed, so much so that the red was visible against his black scales. As it was only the two of them on the stairs, he figured he could answer honestly. “I… well… I just… thought… you’d… make an excellent action hero! You have the looks and the style for it! And…”

“When that imp called you Penny, was he referring to your online handle? You don’t happen to go by ShinyPenny88 online, do you?”

“Well, Shiny Penny… was… my old… theater arts name…” he said slowly, stammering. “That’s how we know each other. Crossed paths on a similar circuit. But it was never really…”

“Yeah, I don’t need to know about your imp history. I have other questions. You haven’t been online role playing with and sexting a SpiderCider account, have you?”

“I… uh… I… how did you know that?!”

He held up his phone. “Hello, ShinyPenny88. Meet SpiderCider. Also, I figured out who you were weeks before you disappeared because you’d mention things that I knew Anthony had done in several of your messages. When the texts stopped at the same time you disappeared, that was confirmation. Also, you weren’t exactly subtle peering around the corner like that at me.”

“Well, this is…”

“You can say awkward.”

“I was going to say interesting,” Pentious responded. “So… where do we go from here?”

“I was hoping you’d tell me.”


	10. Conclusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, after all that... what happened to our snakes and spiders?

Arackniss was a man of secrets. As both a highly skilled assassin and important member of the arachnid mafia, he kept everything close to his chest, rarely letting anything out. The only that slipped out of him less often than secrets was smiles. One secret, however, was out of the bag. At least, to the relevant parties. It wasn’t like he was screaming it from the rooftops. What could this secret be, you might ask?

It turns out… the little spider had quite a large secret he’d been hiding in such a small body. That was… master/pet was absolutely his kink. And seeing the two snake demons being treated as pets, being forced to crawl naked in their terrarium… he’d had to fight back his boner the entire rescue effort. That hadn’t exactly been the easiest thing he’d ever done. He thought it would remain a secret until he was purged. Yet somehow…

He cracked his whip loudly, threatening his two hissing ‘pet’ snakes. “Back, back!” he ordered the disobedient creatures. He cracked his whip across Pentious’ back, causing the snake to briefly roll up his eyes in ecstasy from the combination of pain and pleasure. He did a little shimmy-squirm with his hips when he was happy.

Using the snake-hook held tightly in one of his other hands, Arackniss pushed Pentious and Zen back into Pentious’ oversized bed. “Are my pets going to behave themselves, or is master going to have to punish them again?” he asked, cracking the whip one more time. The snakes flared out their hoods and hissed, but shrank back into their coils, looking obediently at him for their next order. Speaking during playtime was not allowed for the pets (excluding safe words, of course), but between Zen’s higher-pitched hiss and Pentious’ deep hiss-growl, they found ways to communicate what they wanted and how they were feeling. They also both could speak volumes with their large, expressive eyes. What else wasn’t allowed during playtime for the pets? Clothing, except for collars and leashes. The light reflecting off their smooth, unhidden scales brought a tingling sensation through his groin. 

“Your master had a rough day. I could use some help relaxing,” he informed them, flopping down on the bed between the two snakes. Pentious removed the spider’s jacket and bow tie as Zen slid his pants down around his hips. As Pentious worked on massaging the knots out of his back, Zen was playing with his paw beans. He let out a happy squeak and yanked on the leash hanging around Pentious’ neck, getting a brief yip in response. Pentious had initially been reluctant to give himself over to Arackniss that way, as he was quite a prideful (would have been, had he not gone to the Hotel) Overlord. He’d found there was something strangely soothing about being told what to do and not having to make his own decisions.

Something else Arackniss hadn’t expected was that he’d ever been in a relationship with a man. Of course, Zen was an important piece of their arrangement. He would have had a much harder time going into it if a woman hadn’t also been involved. He never could have imagined that being made into a spider sandwich between two snakes would send him spiraling into depths of pleasure like he had never known before.

Rubbing turned to licking, as the snakes flicked their forked tongues over every sore muscle in his body. When their heads met just above his firm belly, Pentious and Zen began to make out with one another while Arackniss watched, groaning in pleasure and gently sliding his hands up and down his slowly rising member. Watching Pentious grope and slide his hands over Zen’s breasts made his face flush as blood rushed both to his face cheeks and his… other cheeks. He was getting a little sticky on the tip as he watched them rub against each other, their tails curled tightly around one another.

“I love breeding my little pets,” he purred, continuing to stroke his erection. “Are my little darlings in heat? Having their mating cycle?” he urged them on. He was always at least briefly jealous when Pentious’ brilliant pink twin cocks peaked out from under his yellow scales. If he had two dicks, he could have both of his pets service him at once.

Zen was squealing, flat out on her back, as Pentious laid out on top of her, thrusting violently in and out of her warm, wet cloaca. Her tail writhed, trapped and bound within the coils of Pentious’ tail. As his pets were gasping and moaning, mating wildly, his own cock continued to swell in rhythm with their screaming hip gyrations. Despite that Hell eggs couldn’t hatch, Zen’s tail and belly had started to expand with the weight of the eggs growing inside her. It made her delightfully chubby. He had to admit, the idea of seeing her laying her eggs… it made him surprisingly hot. Seeing her squirming as she pushed the elements of new life out of her body was almost too much for him.

Speaking of which, he could tell by the yelping sound Zen made that Pentious had come inside her, and that was when he lost control of his own erection. He erupted like a little Mount Vesuvius, spilling seed down his thighs. “Pets, look what you’ve done!” he chided his panting snakes. “You’ve made me make a mess of myself. Clean me up,” he ordered. His eyes rolled back hard as he felt the pleasure of their long, serpentine tongues as they pushed his thighs wide to give access to his body.

He let his head wander. At some point, he was going to have to come clean to his brother that he was also… a bit more kinky than he’d ever let on. He got the idea that Angel was… suspicious, especially after seeing him leaving the Hotel in the early morning hours more than once. There was still the issue of Zen’s crazy mother to deal with. After the three day cool off period, Zen had decided to tell her to hit the road. She… hadn’t taken that well. They’d had to force her to leave. Zen also worried about the possibility of being hunted down by her sister or their former master, if either had ended up in Hell with them. Only having the protection of the Princess calmed her worried mind.

Strangely enough, Zen seemed to be the most serious about the Princess’ ‘redemption’ idea. Zen had been writing apology notes to the people who had been in the car with her on the night of her death, as well as to the people who had been in the opposing car that night. She didn’t know if she could find them. She didn’t know if they’d accept her words. But she was going to try. Arackniss couldn’t help but wonder if she was going to be the first to make it to Heaven. He’d miss her slithe tongue roaming every inch of his body if that happened, but he’d still be happy for her.

On the subject of tongues… he noticed Zen and Pentious had stopped, and were looking at him with their heads tilted in confusion. “Sorry, got distracted,” he said, shaking his head. He patted the bed on either side of himself. “Post play cuddle?” he asked.

With huge, fanged grins, he ended up with a snake on either side of him. Pentious had his head on top of Arackniss’ head, Zen had her face pressed into his neck. The two snakes put their arms around him, entwining their fingers together as tightly as they coiled their tails. They were the world’s greatest weighted blanket. How he slept with all his anxiety before this, he didn’t know.

He sighed deeply. Zen may be working hard towards reaching Heaven, but… as far as Arackniss was concerned, he was already there, he thought as he petted their hoods as the three drifted off to sleep.


End file.
